Walking on Broken Glass

by Christa Allan

  I used to tell my students that writing was all about the pen. Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Everyone had to find a pen that was “just right.” Not too slow that it couldn’t keep pace with their thoughts and not too fast that it hurried thoughts and ink along, barely interacting with the paper. I’d show them one of my favorites, a stocky, lapis-colored, extra-fine point, marbled pen I’d ordered years ago from one of my favorite catalogs. Molly would always laugh and say she didn’t have any friends except me who’d throw away the new Victoria Secrets catalog and immerse themselves in the latest from Levenger's. Finding a pen that fit my hand and writing style versus finding lace panties the size of dental floss that fit what I needed to sit on to write—no contest.

  “I said you gotta keep the Bible.” Theresa leaned over, her blouse pleading for mercy in the attempt, and shoved the Bible in my hands. “Look, she had your name put on it. See?”

  Theresa pointed to Leah Adair Thornton inscribed on the burgundy leather cover. I opened it and found written on the first page: “The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8 NLT). Dearest Leah, this is God's journal. He’ll be reading yours. Now you’ll have some time to read His. I’m praying for you.—Molly

  Really? God should’ve watched Alyssa instead of reading people's journals. After all, if He's God, didn’t He already know what I’d write on its blank pages?

  Nobody knew about Alyssa, about nights I’d fall asleep on her bedroom floor clutching her soft baby powder-scented blankets, about how I’d slip my hand in my purse where I always carried her silver rattle so I could put my hands around something she had held.

  Inside Edition's hostess filled the television screen. A man trapped underwater in a cylinder had thirty-three hours to escape before his oxygen ran out. “We’ll let you know if he lives.” She smiled. I’m struck by the fact that Alyssa had the same number of days with us as he had hours to live.

  “Good luck,” I told the screen.

  22

  While I reboxed my new, unasked for, and likely never-to-be read Bible, I was deposed as Queen Suburbia in Rehab. The Princess of Designer Drugs, accompanied by our very own Jan, teetered out of the elevator in Jimmy Choo teal patent leather sling backs.

  A Prada dress splashed with blooming flowers in shades no flower would be caught dead in defined almost every inch of her body. I’d bet a Botox treatment that the purse Jan hijacked was also Prada. I couldn’t wait to tell Carl's mother that her fashion training paid off and in the unlikeliest place.

  The new client was a walking haute-couture advertisement, except for the blood-stained tissues she kept jamming into her surgically altered nose. Jan led her to the counter, steering her by the elbow as though she were an upright vacuum cleaner. Judging by the baseball-size roll of tissues she clutched, I’d say that nose of hers probably had sucked its share of white powder.

  I looked around to make sure I wasn’t so insensitive as to say that aloud. Even with crumbs of dried blood on her face and wobbling on knees about as sturdy as Play-Doh, she looked stunning—one of those women who wake up with-

  out morning mouth or helmet hair. Radiant. “Arm candy” my brother called them. This one would’ve sent most men into a diabetic coma.

  Men like Carl.

  And there it was—the putrid smell of insecurity.

  She was everything I wasn’t. Not that I envied her drug of choice (how noble of me). But without a dedicated team of plastic surgeons, a rack to stretch my body, blonde hair and extensions, and transplants, I’d be renting this body for always. Trapped in the same room with women like her, I felt like a piece of furniture—a piece Carl's mother desperately wanted to reupholster.

  In my pre-recovery days, I’d have leveled the playing field with gin or vodka or wine or beer by now. I might not ever look like her, but I could pour in the security, composure, and assertiveness.

  Owning these thoughts made sobriety feel like a horror movie unfolding one frame at a time. Any faster risked exposing the monster inside, and that would be entirely too frightening.

  “Hey, now she's a girlie, for sure.” Theresa said to her fingernails as she chiseled off the red polish, the chips drifting to the floor like bloody snowflakes.

  Empty urine specimen bottles lined the counter, patiently waiting to be claimed by their owners due back soon from their weekend passes.

  Matthew looked up from labeling the last one. Strange sort of Welcome Wagon gift all in a row. Not something I imagined Mrs. Cleaver in her shirtwaist dress and pearls handed off to the Beav as he walked through the door after a date. Hi, sweetie, so glad you’re home. Now, be a good boy and go pee for me. And wash your hands. I have brownies waiting.

  In the alternate universe of rehab world, though, these babies had status. A rite of passage—like being assigned a parole officer meant being one step closer to civilian life.

  “Play time's almost over.” Theresa yawned, still attacking her nail polish and bypassing the social grace of covering her stretchy mouth with her hands. “Wait till they see …” She stood up and sent a flurry of red acrylic snowflakes to the floor. “Oops.”

  “See what? The mess you need to sweep off the floor?” I two-stepped around the red shavings and moved in the direction of my room to deposit my two gift boxes.

  “Oh.” The two letters rolled out of her mouth like they were on an amusement park ride. “You gonna pretend nobody's gonna pay attention to Glamour Girl? You jealous?”

  Am not. Am not. My inner child pouted, stomped her feet, held her breath. My outer adult sent her to her room. “How ridiculous! Besides, do you even know how impossible it is to get blood out of designer clothes?”

  I glanced at the door to Jan's office: closed. “Why would I be jealous of someone who has a bigger problem than I do?”

  “I dunno. She come in here, and you doing elevator eyes up and down that girl. Like this.” Theresa paused for a demonstration. “Then you get this weird look.” She looked down and patted the pockets of her shorts, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of one and a stick of spearmint gum out of the other. “I’m getting me a light. Going outside for a smoke. You can come if you want.”

  An invitation to secondhand smoke leading to a slow, painful death, or I could stay and let my own thoughts keep me company. Both paths led to pain. “I’ll put these away and find you outside,” I said.

  Theresa's eyebrows elevated a notch. Her expression reminded me of my students when I’d release them from morning detention two minutes after they arrived.

  She walked over to Matthew, one of the keepers of the lighters. “I’ll wait. Ain’t like you going far.”

  How true. How true.

  “Be right there,” I alerted the back of her head as she leaned over to light her cigarette.

  Journal 9

  The tuxedoed waiter, with a deft and understated flair, snapped open my napkin and guided the fluttering white linen to my lap.

  My last memory of fine dining was having a lobster bib tied around my neck the night of Senior Prom. “I’m not that impressed. They’re just crawfish on steroids,” I told my mother the next day and pretended the butter-drenched lobster jetting onto my ice-pink taffeta dress after I tried stabbing it with a fork didn’t happen. I hadn’t bothered to order lobster since then.

  Tonight, though, was a covert operation leading me out of familiar territory and into Etienne's, where a reservation was as likely for someone outside the landed gentry as invitations to a debutante's coming-out party. Menus the size of a small infant and weighing almost as much were presented with a flourish as if recently composed by a Pulitzer Prize winner.

  I scanned the pages searching for the translated version of the offerings. Even Shakespeare editions had user-friendly translations. But the only words not written in French were to comfort the diners that they’d be relieved of having to factor a twenty percent gratuity because it would be automatically added to the bill. How was I supposed to know that
taking two years of Spanish to avoid the French teacher—because he looked like he’d stepped out of a totally off-off Broadway musical about bad hair days—would return to haunt me? Was there no Mexican dish at this restaurant? Surely there would have been something politically incorrect about translating chimi-changas and flautas into French?

  Dinner with Carl's parents: Carl's idea of announcing our engagement. I felt underdressed, over-menued, and outclassed. I prayed my internal squirming didn’t pulse out of my body, sending waves of discomfort across the white sea of tablecloth.

  Mrs. Thornton lowered her menu as if she’d been playing an adult version of hide-and-seek and spoke to me. “Dear, would you prefer the Poisson?”

  How should I know? Frankly, I’d prefer your son's hand not making its way up my thigh while I’m sitting across from you.

  23

  Question: What comes after sobriety and before week two?

  a) Week one.

  b) Weak one.

  c) Week won.

  d) Weak won.

  e) All of the above.

  In seven days, God created the universe, and I followed along. Instead of His day and night, I had the inside of the second floor and outside AA meetings and the coming and going of the staff. Plus the cafeteria food and the ice-cream-stocked refrigerator.

  I didn’t mind the 6 a.m. wake-up calls. Most mornings they were a reprieve from Theresa's gargantuan snores. Breakfast was served thirty minutes later. I traded my normal face treatment time for sleep time.

  After breakfast the group met to discuss urgent issues like who left magazines on the floor (Annie) or whose cigarette ashes continued to litter the floor and tables (Doug) or who kept hiding the remote control (the teenage duo).

  No sign of Miss Nose Candy. The teens buzzed that they heard she hadn’t been released from third-floor detox.

  After our mandatory morning mauling, we were routed to occupational therapy or group therapy or meditation time or exercise time before lunch. Now that I’d identified protozoan blots, brain-cramped my way through number sequences, and reassured the white-jacketed psych staff I wasn’t going to chain Stephen King to a bed anytime soon, I was cleared to start my occupational therapy sessions.

  When I taught, occupational therapy meant I sipped wine in a bubble bath or released frustration by swiping my credit card. Was sobriety an occupation? If so, I was going to be painting my way to recovery with ceramic vases, ashtrays, and soap dishes.

  After I splattered aggressive reds and calming blues all over my ceramic vase or whatever my object of the day might be, lunch followed. Always at noon. The predictability of that was comforting. And disturbing. I was disturbed by how comforted I was with routine. So much of what I thrived on as a teacher was wrapped up in the great unknown of each day. After losing Alyssa, my life's sameness smothered me. Every morning I opened the door to a steaming sauna, thick with grief and swollen with sadness.

  Now, I welcomed the unsurprising complacency.

  When lunch ended, we recycled the morning schedule offerings and ate dinner at six. Three or four weeknights of outside AA meetings, and weekends and other weeknights were in-house AA meetings. Ten o’clock lights out.

  A schedule. A reliable robotic routine.

  Then, in week two, the slithering snake of individual therapy sessions appeared in the form of Ron Palmisano.

  At least the group therapy sessions were shared torture. Once Ron invaded my life all I could think about was that fire and brimstone sermon of Jonathan Edwards: spiders dangled over the fiery pit of hell by a God about as happy as a father who just found out his daughter's dating a convict.

  Only my time with Ron makes the inferno seem like an enthusiastic sauna at a day spa. The first appointment was brutal—like labor pains. At first, I didn’t know what to expect, so each new contraction was a frightful surprise. But as time passed, and the contractions grew stronger and more frequent, anticipating the pain only increased its intensity.

  After the first session, I craved a cold six-pack or a small instrument of torture. Or both. Ron did not do nice. He did not want nice. And he thought I was nice.

  “I’ve read Trey and Kevin's notes. You’re the little housewife alcoholic.” A verbal cocktail of two parts serious, one part sarcasm. Stirred slowly over a wedge of a smile.

  My inner child stuck out her tongue.

  Ron opened the manila file on his desk. “You are Leah, right?”

  I knew a rhetorical question when I heard one. But what I didn’t know was why I’d been auctioned off to this guy after I’d already faced off with Trey.

  “I’m confused. I thought I was supposed to see Trey.” Inner child just entered puberty.

  “Sorry. I thought he or somebody—” he glanced down at my file and looked back at me “—explained the line-up. Trey's in charge of family sessions. You and I will meet for one-on-one sessions. Beginning today.”

  Obviously there was no limit to the number of people allowed access to my brain. At some point could I hang a neon “no vacancy” sign on my forehead? At least Carl might be placated knowing the insurance coverage provided generously.

  “I already went over this with Trey.” An all-too-familiar flush of self-consciousness bled out of my pores. I didn’t need a mirror to know the blush would rise from my neck to my cheeks like mercury in a thermometer. How many times did I have to confess? How many times did I have to unfold the story from my memory, rolling it out like a beginner's crudely knitted scarf?

  “I know. I don’t want to read Trey's version of your version. I’d rather hear you tell me.” He reached in the desk drawer, pulled out a paper clip, started it on tumblesets between his fingers, and stared at me.

  “But I’m not a real alcoholic. I’m in mid-stage.”

  Ron's paper clip stilled.

  “That's what the intake person told me.” Oh, brilliant me.

  “I see,” said Ron, in a snarky way that said not only did he not see, but he saw I didn’t see as well. He dropped the paper clip into a chipped mug on his desk that held two yellow pencils and a pair of scissors. “Not a real alcoholic. Hm. Tell me how you define this ‘mid-stage’.”

  I didn’t heed the cynicism that hitched a ride on Ron's voice. I pedaled right off into the land of eager-to-please and explained my mid-stagedness to him. How I didn’t drink all day, how I waited until five o’clock, except on weekends when, really, drinking could start before noon or even at breakfast depending on the occasion, and I wouldn’t get vomiting sick all the time, and I mostly drank beer, and wine—red wine, which is good for you—and sometimes vodka and gin, hardly ever rum, and I could stop drinking anytime I wanted to because I’d stopped for a few days and I was fine, but my husband and his family drank. And, of course, there were all these social events we had to attend, and it's rude to not drink when you’re offered a drink, and I knew not to drive if I drank too much, and Carl always knew when I drank too much, so he’d be sure to take my keys, and I’d never had an accident from drinking—well, just that one time when I didn’t see the mailbox, but that doesn’t really count as an accident.

  “You must be exhausted,” he said. Sympathetic words dipped in battery acid. Ron leaned back in his ergonomically correct chair and pulsed gently. He scratched the side of his head with his pen. It didn’t even disturb his close-cut hair the color of red clay I’d find in my backyard. Appraising eyes, like he was examining a diamond suspecting it was a fake.

  I squirmed.

  He rocked.

  I knew this game. The waiting game.

  Ron would lose this one. I was an expert at disconnect. On nights when Carl forced himself on me, I’d make grocery lists in my head or imagine myself in my closet wondering what I’d wear to our next social event. I pretended to examine Ron's navy- and white-striped tie while I mentally squirmed from underneath Carl.

  “Where are you going, Leah?”

  Ron lost, but I’m the six-year-old standing by the front door, clutching my Strawberry
Shortcake suitcase, announcing to my parents I’m running away.

  “Nowhere. At least until the end of this month.” My voice pouted.

  Rocking Ron stopped. “How difficult is it for you, being nice all the time? Must be mid-stage difficult, huh?”

  He walked over to the window behind his desk and pulled up the shade. The sound reminded me of the backpack zipper symphony orchestrated by my students as they geared up to dart out of class the second after the bell rang.

  “Predicting rain today.” He jammed his hands into his pants pockets. “Shops don’t look busy.”

  Since he spoke to the window, I guessed he meant the shopping plaza across the street with stucco store fronts shaded by wide forest-green awnings. Cafe Latte on the corner. Molly and I would meet there for lunch. Carl and Devin avoided the place. Said it was too girlie. Like the salads wore lingerie. Two doors away was Babycakes, one of those stores that leveraged new parent angst into multiplying profits, full of cottony sherbet shades of baby-powder-scented everything. Lolly, the owner, sent us pink roses after Alyssa died. I’d plunged each one, bud first, into the garbage disposal. The stem didn’t grind well, but for a few seconds, as it made its descent, it looked like a green straw spinning crazily out of control. I understood. The process and the bottle of Robert Mondavi next to the sink had entertained me until we were both empty.