by Devyn Dawson
“Caide, I realize you’re upset, but yelling at me isn’t going to solve anything.”
“Sorry, I don’t mean to yell AT you, but damnit, I just found out I won’t be going back to court until the end of October. Why does Lucy have to be punished because her grandparents are idiots?” I lean my head against the passenger side door’s window and stare at the road racing by. Alex blathers on about being good and staying out of trouble and blah blah blah.
Somehow the rude assistant knows we’re a group of pissed off humans. She doesn’t bother telling Alex about calls or anything at all as we walk through the office. My mom’s eyes are rimmed in red, she’s never been able to hide the fact she’s been crying. Both of my parents talk to Alex and I sit and stare out of the window. Main Street runs in front of her office and I get lost watching everyone drive past.
“Look, give me the address to the place for the meeting. You said something about a meeting being tonight, I’ll go. Is that for Al Anon or Parenting? Since both are totally things I’m lacking in? Actually, just text me the time and address, I need to get out of here,” I stand up abruptly and start for the door.
My mom crosses the office and puts her arm around my back. “Caide, we’ll get her back. Where are you going?”
“To the bar,” I answer honestly.
“Son, you can’t afford to get a D.U.I. right now,” Mom says.
I nod my head, “Don’t worry, I won’t drive.”
“Hon, why don’t you come to the house?”
“Mom, I’m fine. I’m going to the bar and drinking a few cocktails, and then I’m going to an AA meeting for family members of drunks.”
“Could you not show up to the meeting three sheets to the wind?” Alex says.
“Oh okay, yeah, I’ll do that. Everyone! Off my ass! I’m out of here. If you get my daughter back, call me. Mom…Dad…I’m fine. In about twenty minutes, I’ll be even better. Talk to you when I talk to you.”
I stand up and storm through the doors to leave.
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I pull up to 17 Oceans Way, home of Three Sheets Club, and I plan to be that way in about forty five minutes. I check my phone before going in, a text from Alex.
Meeting starts at 8:00 700 Palm Leaf St - Parking in the back.
Bite me!
Three Sheets is in the only “high-rise” in Emerald Isle. It’s on the top floor, a whole five stories high. As a member only club, tourists aren’t allowed. Every once in a while, someone with deep pockets and celebrity notoriety is allowed in, but it isn’t often. I take a barstool at the elaborate mahogany bar. I’m probably the only person here under thirty, with the exception of the barmaid and bartender.
“Caide, I haven’t seen you in a while,” the bartender says as he sets a napkin down with the assumption a cocktail will accompany it soon. “Would you like your usual?”
He has the most amazing memory for what people drink. Hell, I can’t even remember his name. Whiskey Sour is my usual, when I come here. “That would be great, make it a double if you don’t mind.”
“Yes sir, would you like me to reserve the car for you?” He asks discreetly.
I look him in the eyes, and shake my head yes. The club has a couple of limos it reserves for guests who have had too much to drink. Thankfully they don’t have a sign along the side that announces the bar name. There’s a party limo in town with magnetic signs announcing the club the people are going to.
Across the bar, waiting on a table is Cheri, the one girl who realizes I’m a dick but flirts anyway. I’ve wanted to fuck that girl since junior year in high school when she called me a “dick munch” in Mr. Grouper’s science class. She moved away before senior year, she moved back sometime within the last six months. She’s a prick-tease like none I’ve come across. She flirts her way to getting a $50.00 tip every time I come in here and start drinking. If she’d suck my dick, I’d be happy to double the tip.
“Would you like a menu, Caide?” The bartender asks.
“Who’s cooking back there tonight? If Chad is working, I want a steak and some sugar snap peas. If he isn’t working, I’ll take a burger and fries.” I know Chad can cook a steak the way it should be cooked. The other guys think everything’s a burger, and over cooks them every time.
Twenty minutes later and three double Whiskey Sours, I’m close to my goal of drunkenness.
“Hey Caaaaide, here’s your steak, Chad said come see him in the kitchen before you leave. What-cha been doing lately? I’ve missed you at the beach,” Cheri coos.
“Have you? Come back to my place, I’ll take you to the beach,” I flirt back. I try to sound as sexy as I can. By the grin on her face, I’m not doing a very good job. Probably because she’s sober, I’m not, and she wants a big tip.
She looks at me as though she’s trying to figure me out. “Oh Caaaide, why don’t you come on over to the pool hall later? A bunch of us are gettin’ together to shoot pool, you should come out, it’ll be fun.” Her accent is deep Southern but sounds like sugar when she talks.
Why does she not understand I don’t want to hang out with her, I want her naked in my bed. I want her hair in my hands as I hold her head back and kiss that beautiful throat. Shit, there’s the hard-on.
“Yeah, we’ll see. I have a thing tonight,” I say and start cutting my steak. I take a mouthful and close my eyes as I figure out each spice used in the seasoning.
“Okaaaaay, but if you change your mind, Caide, we’ll be there.”
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I offer the limo driver three hundred dollars for the rest of the night, plus a tip. Monday nights aren’t the typical clubbing night, so he agreed. Good, that way no one can say I’m a bad parent.
A portly man is at the back door having a smoke. “You here for da meetin,” Portly asks with a Cajun accent.
“Yeah, is this the place?”
“Da, down de-stairs in da basement, we have a few minutes before we start.”
I enter the quiet building and find the stairway pretty easily. There’s nothing outstanding about the meeting room, it’s nothing more than tan walls and white tiled flooring. A table with coffee and store bought cookies and muffins. They didn’t bother to put them on a plate; they left them in their clear plastic containers.
A few people gather around the coffee pot, on high alert if the carafe goes empty. The coffee guards, that’s kind of funny. Everyone is much older than I thought. I expected to see everyone in their teens or twenties, it looks more like a wide range of attendees….maybe they’re patients….whatever they’re called.
A girl comes in with an armful of papers and goes over to the eight-foot table that has a semicircle of chairs in front of it. She has on a pair of white slacks and a dark blue shirt with a butterfly across the front. She’s obviously in a hurry of some sort, the way she drops the papers on the table and starts sorting them. Of everyone in the room, she looks the closest to my age.
“Excuse me, do you mind? River’s made cookies, they go fast so I want to be close to the table,” a man in his mid-forties asks.
Unintentionally, I’m blocking the table. I’m sure the Coffee Guards are thinking they need a guard for the cookies. “Oh sure, I didn’t mean to be in the way.”
I don’t feel as drunk as I should, so I walk over to the chairs and take one at the end. I hate shit like this. I’d like to make Heather’s parents go to damn meetings. The girl is still sorting her papers and puts a handful of pencils on the table. Her tan sets off her bright eyes and full lips. I can’t tell if her eyes are green or blue, but they’re light. She looks serious the way she is concentrating on getting the papers just right. I watch her long enough to figure out she’s a touch OCD.
Without warning, she walks over to me. “Hi, you’re Caide right?” Her long auburn hair is braided over her shoulder, it’s long enough to create a line down past her tits. Her hazel eyes are large on her perfectly angled face.
> “Yeah, that’s me.” For reasons I don’t know, she looks stunned, like we’ve met before or something. “How do you know my name? I thought this was anonymous.”
She absently fingers her braid as we talk. “Right, it is…they won’t know your name unless you say anything. I got a fax from Judge Grossman’s office; they said you were ordered to attend meetings. All I have is your name and the sheet you’ll sign each time you come.” She scoots one of the chairs over so she could sit face to face with me.
Awesome, I’ll sign and leave. They’ll have my signature to prove I came to the meeting, so this should be easy.
“Caide, I’m sure you’re thinking you can sign and leave, but it doesn’t work that way. You’ll sign at the end of the meeting. If you’re more than fifteen minutes late, it will be considered a half visit. Tonight you don’t have to share with anyone if you’re not up to it. I’m sorry for whatever it is that brings you here. I’m new to this too. I was one of you, another face, another story, another broken heart. When they asked me to be a group leader, I didn’t feel like I was ready. Finally, about two months ago, I felt that I was ready to give back and become a leader. I took over this timeslot about three weeks ago. Do you have any questions before everyone comes over to sit down?”
I’ve had to have seen her somewhere before, her voice is familiar to me. “Do I know you from somewhere?” She shakes her head no, but I’m not convinced. “What’s your name?”
“I’m River Murphy, I have a little shop in the Plaza Shopping Center. It’s a little boutique called…”
“Miss River, are we having cookies today?” The man who wanted to be the first getting the cookies says.
She smiles at me; she has a pretty smile with bright white teeth. When I was a kid, I had to take an antibiotic that turned my teeth brown. I was so glad when my final baby tooth fell out so I wouldn’t have brown teeth anymore. My hygienist teases me about how white my teeth are now.
“That’s John, he loves cookies,” River whispers to me. “John, I will put them out in a minute.”
“Okay Miss River, I hope they’re chocolate chip.”
River’s face goes stoic again and she tilts her head to the side as she looks at me. “Caide, have you been drinking?”
Fuck, busted. I feel like high school all over again. “I had a cocktail at dinner.” She doesn’t need to know how many.
“I hope you didn’t drive here. John lost his wife in a drunk driving accident, she was driving and he was a passenger. He suffered a traumatic brain injury.” Her bright hazel eyes glare into mine.
I put my hands up, “I didn’t drive, I have a driver tonight.”
“Of course you do, whatever, the meeting is about to start.” She stands up and pushes the chair back where it was.
What does she mean ‘of course you do’, who is she to judge? Why do I give a fuck anyway?
River stands up in front of everyone and explains how living with an alcoholic or drug user takes its toll on family and friends. As well as Alcoholics Anonymous there is a twelve steps program. Rules and more rules.
John sets his paper plate full of cookies on his metal folding chair. He must really like her cookies. Physically he looks fine; you’d never know he’d suffered a brain injury. He’s dressed as though he came in after a day at the office. He could be a salesperson or computer tech, he looks like everyone else. Among the rest of us, he blends in…until he speaks. His speech is slurred and child like with his short and simple sentences. His eyes told a different story, his eyes were dull and it was as though he didn’t blink. That’s got to be impossible, if it isn’t, he didn’t blink.
He pulls a neatly folded up piece of notebook paper out of his pocket and meticulously unfolds it and straightens it out. The lady next to me leans over and whispers, “He reads this to us at every meeting.”
John,
You were amazing at the conference tonight. I can’t believe that investor from Alabama is going to meet with us next week. I knew that software would be a hit. Everyone in the room was mesmerized when you brought it out and showed them how it works. Can you imagine every student from age six to sixty will be able to simplify their life! Baby, this time next week, we will schedule a family trip with our kids. Oh, I can’t wait! We’ll have to do it soon or Jamie will be too far along and won’t be able to travel. Grandparents…. I’ve wanted to be a grandma ever since Roger got married. Okay Grandpa software designer, I’ll pick you up to meet your team for drinks.
I love you…. I’m so proud of you.
Love Grandma - aka - The Love of YOUR Life!
John takes a tissue from his pocket and wipes away a lone tear. “This is the last letter I received from my wife. She’s gone now,” another tear falls, “she was an alcoholic but I didn’t realize it back then. I miss her. She would be a grandma to three little girls, but she died and I lived.” He abruptly stops talking and folds his paper up and puts it back in his pocket and goes back to his seat.
A lump has closed off my airway as I think about how his life was summed up to be a promising one for a fleeting moment and now it’s gone. Now he goes to meetings and eats chocolate chip cookies made by an aggravating woman.
Everyone except me and one other person stood up to talk. After a long pause, River stands up front and tells us to have a good evening and she’d see us Thursday. She motions for me to come over to where she’s at and I do.
“I’m happy you came out tonight Caide, I’m sure this was a lot to take in. I’m here for you any time you need someone to talk to.” She lowers her voice to a whisper, “And if you show up to another meeting with alcohol on your breath, I’ll notify the judge the next day. If you can’t refrain, you may need to attend AA meetings instead.”
She did not just call me a drunk. I think she did! How nervy. This can’t be the only Al Anon meeting around here. “I don’t have a drinking problem, but thanks for trying to insinuate I do.”
River gathers up the papers she had so neatly set out, which I don’t understand since no one took any of the papers. “I’m not insinuating you have a drinking problem, but this meeting is for people who have been affected by others with drug or alcohol problems. This is a safe place for them to vent about those issues. I’m concerned they’ll be afraid to talk if they think you’re an alcoholic. ”
I shake my head in understanding, it’s a valid point. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to make anyone uncomfortable. This is new to me; I didn’t know there were meetings like this in our little town. How often do we meet?”
“I am here three times a week, Monday, Thursday, and Saturday at five. There are other time slots, ones that work for any schedule. The sheet the judge sent over says you are required to attend two meetings a week. Here,” she hands me a sheet of paper, “this is the schedule. We encourage everyone who is new to the program to do thirty visits within thirty days. I can’t make you come more than you’re willing too, if you’re willing at all.”
I look at the calendar and she’s right, I can be fucked up in the head at almost any time, day or night. “Wow, that’s a lot of meetings. I didn’t realize so many people would come to something like this.”
“If you mean, something like this as in support groups, you’d be surprised. Addiction doesn’t discriminate; it is in almost every family. Can you help me put these chairs up?”
We fold the chairs and place them along the wall with the other chairs that weren’t used. We gather up the uneaten snacks and she places them in a bag and tells me she drops them off at the nursing home by her house. Pretty and kind, who likes to bust balls, she’s interesting in ways I’ve never known. I wait for her as she turns off all the lights and locks the door.
“Bye Caide, I’ll see you later this week.” She clicks her fob and her red Jeep Wrangler Unlimited chirps as it unlocks.
My driver is standing outside of the Lincoln Navigator waiting to open the door for me. I feel like a putz for having a limo, but it is what it is.
�
��Sir, would you like me to take you to the pool hall as you instructed earlier?” The driver asks before he closes the door.
Why did I want to go to the pool hall? Cheri, that’s right, sweet talking Cheri. “No, I’ll go home.”
“Very well.” He shuts the door and I lean back in my seat, by myself…alone.
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Chapter Four
“I became insane, with long horrible intervals of sanity.”
Edgar Allan Poe
RIVER
“No Ryan, I’m sure it was him. For the love of god, I’ve watched his segments on baking from day one. Not to mention, his name is Caide, pretty much a giveaway.” I say to Ryan, my best friend for the last ten years. He’s been with me through everything, my mom’s alcoholism, her death, boyfriends, through everything that made sense and those that didn’t.
Ryan stirs in another packet of sugar into his coffee. How he sleeps after we sit at Waffle House drinking coffee half the night is beyond me. “You’re certain he bats for your team? I don’t have a snowball chance in hell?” When we were fifteen, Ryan and I stole a bottle of my mom’s wine and hid in my backyard to get drunk. He tried to kiss me to find out if he liked girls. He said that if he could kiss someone like me and not feel anything, then he was positively gay. I didn’t tell him his kiss didn’t do anything for me either and I’m most certainly not gay.
“Nope, he’s straight.” I reach in my purse and pull out my e-cig with its Cherry Crush flavor. I’ve been trying to quit since the day I started smoking.
“That sucks….well he doesn’t,” He says trying to be funny.
“Oh… ewwww… you did not make a joke about sucking dick. Enough about him, tell me about your new job.” I sit and listen to him tell me about his new job as a personal assistant to Jackson Thomas from Good Morning, North Carolina. He’d been working for a retired oil tycoon until he died last month. He left him his beach house and his brand new Jaguar, in his will. His son threatened to contest the will, until he saw a video where his dad spelled out why he cut him from the will. Thankfully for Ryan’s sake, he didn’t tell him he had been his boy-toy for the last year of his life. To the average person, Ryan doesn’t set off gay-dars or anything, it was his way of keeping his options open. He hates the way people discriminate against same-sex couples so he hides it to keep the peace.
