by Gail Sattler
“So when was your last drink, Mike?”
Mike stiffened. “Yesterday.” And he was going to have another one the second he got back home.
“Before you take that next drink, think of what you heard today. I look forward to seeing you again soon.” He stuffed a piece of paper in Mike’s shirt pocket and turned around to talk to someone else.
Fortunately, Bruce was right behind him, and they headed straight for Bruce’s car.
Mike stared out the car window the entire trip home without saying a word. He wondered how Claude knew what he was thinking. He didn’t have a wife to lose, and since he would one day take over his father’s company, his job was set for life. However, what Claude said about his friends held a note of familiarity. Mike tried to think of a single friend who had stood beside him when he’d been arrested. Not one had made any effort to help him. In fact, some of them had laughed.
Only because of Claude’s implied suggestion, he would not drink tonight.
He flicked on the television and parked himself on the couch, but he couldn’t sit still. Especially today, Mike felt the absence of a glass in his hand as he sat alone. Rather than dwell on it, he stomped to the bedroom to change and go to bed early since there was nothing decent on television. When he began to unbutton his shirt, a crumple sounded in his pocket. Inside was the piece of paper Claude had given him. Instead of the AA rhetoric he had expected, it was a simple handwritten note.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” 2 Cor. 5:17
Mike stared at the note. The words “he is a new creation” were heavily underlined.
He stared at the paper in his hand. He didn’t need to become new. The old Mike was just fine. What he needed was to get some sleep. He threw the paper on the floor and crawled into bed.
Patricia Norbert picked up the ringing phone. “Hello?”
“May I please speak to Bruce?” a shaky baritone voice asked.
“I’m sorry, he’s not home. Is there a message?”
“Do you know what time he’s going to be back?”
Patricia checked her watch. The caller’s tone made her suspect it was one of her brother’s probation cases. Bruce’s supervisor was constantly telling him not to give out his home number. If it was an emergency, they were supposed to contact the answering service and the message would be forwarded. Again, it appeared Bruce thought differently.
“Not until late. Is there something you need?”
The voice laughed hesitantly. “I need to ask him for an address.”
Patricia frowned. Just like their father, Bruce never discussed personal details of his case histories. However, in this case, Bruce had left a note on the fridge for her because he was hoping for a certain call.
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“It’s Mike. Mike Flannigan.”
Patricia rested her finger on the note. “Can you wait for a minute, Mike? Bruce asked me to let him know if you called.”
Patricia pulled her cell phone out of her purse, walked into the living room where Mike wouldn’t hear what she said, and dialed Bruce’s cell number.
“Bruce? It’s Patty. Mike called, just like you said, and he wants to talk to you.”
“He probably feels the need for another AA meeting. I had a feeling he might, and that’s good. But I can’t get out of here for another hour, and the meeting starts before then. The address is on the fridge. I guess he’ll have to take a cab because he lost his license. I wanted to take him just to make sure he went, but I can’t. Oops. I gotta go.”
Patricia didn’t know much about Alcoholics Anonymous except for what Bruce had told her. Evidently, the group’s history started in 1935 as a Bible study but had been watered down in its spiritual content to include more people who needed help. Although she failed to understand how anyone could let alcohol strip a person’s common sense and dignity, she respected any organization that helped people get their lives back together. She also knew that many people found Christ through the AA program.
If Bruce considered Mike worth breaking the rules for, that was all Patricia needed to know. She walked back into the kitchen and pulled the note off the fridge.
She checked the time and picked up the phone. “Mike? Bruce left the address and time right here, but the meeting starts in half an hour. If you have to wait for a cab, you’ll be late for the meeting. Bruce thought it was important for you to go, so I can take you. I’ve got your address. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Patricia hung up before Mike could reply. She locked up Bruce’s house and was on her way.
As Patricia pulled up to the address on Bruce’s note, it was all she could do not to stare at the front of Mike’s house. Due to Mike’s being one of her brother’s cases, she certainly hadn’t expected this.
The main story’s brick front contrasted elegantly with the white vinyl siding used on the second story. The deep red Spanish villa-style shingles and shutters finished off the stateliness of a beautiful executive home. Tall trees graced the professionally landscaped property, and the driveway, rather than being plain cement, was cobblestone.
Whoever Mike was, Mike had more money than she’d ever have if he could afford to live in the Kerrisdale area of Vancouver and have a house like this.
Patricia knocked. A man answered the door. He was tall, and she guessed him to be in his mid-thirties. He wore his dark brown hair in a short, stylish cut which emphasized his chiseled features. His clothes fit him so perfectly she suspected they were tailor-made. While he wasn’t movie star handsome, he was better than average. Patricia wondered if he was ill because he was pale, and his hands were slightly shaky.
She straightened and patted her purse strap on her shoulder. “I’m looking for Mike Flannigan.”
His face paled even more. “Are you Bruce’s wife?”
“No, I’m his sister, Patty. Are you Mike? I’m here to take you to the meeting.”
He nodded and glanced at his wristwatch. “I guess we should go then.”
She backed up a step while he grabbed a waist-length leather jacket from beside the door and locked up.
Conversation in the car was stilted, which Patricia could understand because of the awkward situation. When the usual pleasantries were done, she drove to the address on Bruce’s note in silence.
They arrived at a stately church building not far off Cambie Street. Bruce’s instructions said that the room they were looking for was in the basement, but they wouldn’t have needed further instructions. The noise would have led them to the right room. The cloud of cigarette smoke was another dead giveaway. They arrived with only minutes to spare, so they hurried in.
Once inside, they were welcomed openly. When Patricia greeted newcomers at church, she always asked a few simple questions, such as where they were from and if someone else had invited them. However, no questions were asked here, not even their names, which Patricia thought quite odd, but probably suited the Anonymous part of the name Alcoholics Anonymous.
They were shown to the coffee table at the back and told to help themselves quickly before the meeting started. Patricia didn’t take any coffee because it was evening, but Mike poured a large cup for himself, and they quickly found two seats together near the back.
A man stepped up to the podium and welcomed everyone present. With little preamble, he introduced another man, by first name only, as the first speaker. Mike sat stiff as a board beside her, cradling the Styrofoam cup with both hands in his lap.
Patricia had some experience with a few of the members of her church family coming from alcoholic backgrounds, but nothing would have prepared her for the things the speakers said at this meeting.
The first speaker told of how when he was drinking, his wife hid or dumped all the liquor in the house. She timed him from when he left work to make sure he didn’t stop at the bar, yet by the time he arrived home, he’d had plenty to drink, and no one could figure out how he got it. The man now laughed a
t himself, disgusted by how pathetic he was. He had devised a way to store his liquor in the windshield wiper container under the hood of his car and drank on the way home through a tube he’d run to the driver’s seat. Now that he’d been sober for a number of years, he could laugh at himself, but he shared with the group that he wished he could be as creative on the job and with his family as he had been when he was desperately finding ways to get enough to drink every day.
A woman told of how she thought drinking with the right crowd would further her career. She blamed management favoritism for passing her up for every promotion until one day she took a hard look at herself from a hospital bed. In what was supposed to be a dignified moment, she had been so drunk she tripped in her high-heeled shoes and broke her leg. Confined to the hospital for a couple of days, and without access to alcohol, she had time and a clear head to think about the direction her life was going. She discovered that she no longer associated with those who should have been her peers. The right crowd gradually stopped hanging around with her because her personality changed when she drank, until the only people who would put up with her were those she never would have associated with five years ago.
Patricia fought back tears at the testimony of a man who told how his wife finally left him because of his drinking. She had begun the process of a court battle to limit his visitation rights to his children, but for the time, he still had his two teenaged children every second weekend. One day, his daughter, knowing her father was drunk again, decided to walk home alone late at night rather than call him for a ride home, and was brutally attacked. The day he took her home from the hospital was the last day he’d had a drink.
Patricia couldn’t understand how people could let their lives be so controlled by drink, but at the same time, she couldn’t deny that it happened.
She was pleasantly surprised to hear the meeting end with everyone repeating the Lord’s prayer.
At the closing amen, she turned to Mike. She didn’t know what it was he had done to have Bruce assigned to him as his probation officer, nor did she know how bad his drinking problem was, only that Bruce thought it was important for Mike to attend this session. As she opened her mouth to speak, her words stuck in her throat. Mike’s face was expressionless, hard and closed. He stood quickly, crushing the empty cup as he rose.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” he mumbled.
They had almost made it to the door when an older man stopped them.
“Mike! Good to see you again.” The man pumped Mike’s hand and patted Mike on the shoulder with his other hand.
Mike didn’t respond. His face tightened, and his whole body stiffened.
The man turned to Patricia. “I’m Claude, and I met Mike yesterday at a meeting last night. It’s good to see him here.” He released the handshake, but one hand remained firm on Mike’s shoulder. Patricia could see that Mike was raised to use good manners, because even though it was obvious Mike was not comfortable, he allowed himself to remain captive to Claude’s firm hand still on his shoulder.
“I went to a meeting every day for many months when I first joined AA. I knew myself well enough not to risk going home to an empty apartment, because it would only remind me of what I didn’t want to face. I knew until I could get a handle on my new life that if I spent night after night alone, I would end up drinking again. Are you two, uh, together?”
Patricia didn’t want to embarrass Mike because she didn’t know any details of his life, or his case, so she didn’t want to tell the man the only thing she knew about Mike was his name and address. “Yes, we’re together,” she mumbled.
Claude nodded. “It’s so noisy here. How about if we go out for coffee, to talk away from the crowd? Mostly, the smoke here bothers me. You don’t smoke, do you?”
Patricia shook her head, and she was relieved to see that Mike did the same.
“Good. Let’s go to the donut place down the street. I’ll see you there.” He turned and left before either of them had a chance to decline.
“What do you want to do?” Patricia asked Mike, checking her watch instead of looking at his face. “I’ve got plenty of time.”
“I don’t care,” he mumbled. “You’re driving.”
She wondered if Mike was always this surly but chose to give him the benefit of the doubt.
They pulled into the parking lot of the donut shop at the same time as Claude. The girl behind the counter appeared to know Claude well, so Patricia assumed Claude was a regular customer. They were soon seated in a corner booth.
“Well, Mike, I’m not going to ask if you’re enjoying your first meetings, because I sure didn’t when I first started.” Claude paused to chuckle, then poured some sugar into his coffee.
Mike didn’t see anything funny. He’d never been so uncomfortable in his life. The only reason he was there was as a condition of his probation. While it was true he probably did drink a little too much, he didn’t have a problem. He certainly wasn’t an alcoholic—he never drank before lunchtime, and he was no skid-row wino. He had a nice home and a good job, and he never drank cheap booze just to get drunk. He only drank the best. After all, he could afford it. The only reason he felt shaky and on edge was because he was probably coming down with the flu.
“It looks like you’ve never been to a meeting before, have you, Patty?”
She smiled weakly. “No. Is it that obvious?”
Claude nodded and smiled. “Oh, yes.”
Mike looked at Bruce’s sister. She wasn’t hard on the eyes. She was just what he considered the right height for a woman, about five and a half feet, and she was kinda cute. He figured she was about thirty. Her light brown hair was slightly wavy and hung loose, accenting her wide eyes and pouty little mouth. What he liked best was her blue eyes, large and expressive, taking in everything around them in wide-eyed fascination. She was different from the other women he knew. Patty Norbert’s expressive eyes hid nothing. He could tell she had been frightened by the more aggressive people in the meeting room, and most of all, she obviously felt out of place. It was as if she had the words “I don’t belong here” stamped across her forehead.
Most of the women he’d seen at the meetings had a hard-bitten edge to them, which he could understand. It seemed a good number of the people there had been through a major trauma or had some kind of hard-luck story, which was why they were there. Patty had been even more uncomfortable than he was, and it bothered him that she had been put in that situation because of him.
Mike lowered his head and stared into his cup. At any other time, he could have appreciated getting to know a woman, but tonight all he could think of was the things he’d heard.
“What brings you to AA, Mike? Last night you said you got caught drinking and driving.”
Mike looked up at Claude and Patty, both of whom were studying him. He could have easily snowed Claude, but since his connection to Patty was through her brother, his probation officer, she would know there was more to the story.
He looked straight into Patty’s eyes, her beautiful blue eyes—innocent eyes. He didn’t know why she had come with him, but he didn’t want her there. If Bruce couldn’t accompany him to any of the mandatory twice-weekly AA meetings, he would rather go alone.
“It’s a condition of my probation. I’m going to use it as part of a plea bargain when my court case comes up.”
He noticed she blinked and stiffened. That was good.
“I had a little bit too much to drink one night, and had an accident. I didn’t want to take a Breathalyzer test, so I took off, but they caught me. It’s just a first offense. My lawyer told me that I’ll probably get off with a slap on the wrist or a very short sentence if I behave and go to AA meetings like a good boy.”
Her eyes widened even more, and a light gasp escaped. “You drove away? What if the people in the other car were hurt?”
Mike stared down into his cup. It hadn’t bothered him at the time. All he’d thought about in his drunken state was his own skin.
But now that it was over, the guilt was starting to get to him. “It was only one guy in the car,” he muttered, not looking up. “He wasn’t hurt too badly. I found out he only had a broken arm or something.” His lawyer had told him the man couldn’t work for a few months because of that broken arm, but Mike figured it wasn’t so bad. It would be a little vacation, paid for by the man’s insurance, and he’d be getting a new car out of the deal.
Patty said nothing, which was fine with Mike.
Claude didn’t even blink. “So you’ve been charged with DWI and leaving the scene. What did your friends say?”
He stared up at Claude. “Nothing. It’s not their problem. It’s mine.”
“Nice friends you’ve got.”
Mike didn’t want to think of his friends and how much they’d let him down. None of them would lend him the money to make bail, and they were all too drunk to come and pick him up from the police station. He’d had to call his dad, who wasn’t pleased to have his thirty-three-year-old son call in the middle of the night, getting him out of bed to go down to the police station to pay his bail.
Tonight, when he needed someone to talk to after all he’d been through, most of his friends chose, instead, to go to the club like any other night. The rest of them had gone to Trevor’s house where they could get drunker quicker and partake of substances they couldn’t be seen using in the bar. He wasn’t in the mood for that, especially not so soon after someone had been hurt because of him. For awhile he had been tempted, but a comment he’d heard at the first meeting stuck in his mind—that drinking had become the most important thing in the speaker’s life. Mike had been reaching for a drink at the time that he recalled the comment.
It made him think, maybe he did have a bit of a drinking problem. That was why he’d called Bruce to take him to another meeting. The conditions of his probation stated a minimum of two meetings a week. Bruce had encouraged him to do more. Last night Claude had said he’d been to a meeting every day when he first started going.
