“Food poisoning,” he mumbled, flinging his hand back over his eyes.
“Okay. So you’re an alcoholic and a liar. A double loser.”
“And a murderer, too,” he said, his voice softer than the warm, still air filling the room.
“Get help,” she urged him. “Get help, and I’ll take you to the tree.”
“I don’t want—I don’t . . . ” He faltered.
“You know what? I don’t give a shit what you want.” His respect for her ceremony under the April tree had cooled her anger but failed to douse it. It flared like a jet of flame, scorching through her and singeing the part of her brain that controlled word choice, causing her vocabulary to degenerate into sooty ash, like his. “Next time you want to throw yourself off the roof, don’t invite me, okay? I schlepped all the way over here from Cambridge, I froze my ass off on the roof, I got puked on, and now I have to listen to you whine. Fuck you.”
The sound easing past his lips was definitely not laughter, or even coughing. It was guttural sobs. To hear a woman crying had never fazed Becky, but a weeping man was a rarity, disturbing in an almost apocalyptic way. Like encountering a mutant—a cat with only one eye, a malformed infant, an American flag in which the blue field was green and the stripes yellow and black.
Of course men cried. They should cry. Yet when they did . . . the splintering of a deep male voice into shards of anguish made her want to turn away, to refuse to look.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered between moans and hiccupping sighs. “I’m so sorry.”
For what? Vomiting on me? Getting blotto? Killing April?
Or for sobbing and making me so freaking uncomfortable?
“I hate myself,” he keened.
“Big deal.”
He sucked in a deep, shaky breath. “All right,” he murmured, flinging his arm across his face again so his words emerged muffled. “I’ll go to AA.”
She almost resented the surge of triumph his promise elicited inside her. She didn’t want to care what he did. She didn’t want his anguish or his salvation to matter to her. “And stop drinking?” she goaded him. “You can’t go to AA and keep drinking.”
“Fuck.” Spoken so quietly, like a puff of air. And then, even more quietly, “Okay.”
The apartment door banged open, and Elyse walked in, accompanied by a dewy-faced young man with a ridiculously long scarf looped around his neck. His hair sparkled where snowflakes had landed on his windblown locks, and his cheeks were pink. He was yammering about something, his voice mellifluous and his pronunciation lacking even a trace of Boston. If the past ten minutes of conversation hadn’t wrung Becky out, she might have listened hard enough to know what he was saying. He sounded animated and happy, as bright and crisp as the winter air outside.
“Hey,” Elyse announced, sweeping into the living room. “I ran into Aston on my way upstairs. Aston, this is Becky Zinn,” she introduced them. He beamed a blinding smile at her. She managed to acknowledge him with a nod. “I set the drier to run for an hour,” Elyse went on. “Your coat is so thick, it’ll take at least that long to dry. I figured I could make some dinner while we wait. How does that sound?”
If she couldn’t return to Cambridge, Becky supposed she might as well eat. Elyse’s mention of dinner made her realize how hungry she was. Aston exclaimed, “Feed me, Elyse! Feed me, and I’ll be your slave forever!”
Mark shoved himself into a sitting position, lurched to his feet and stormed to the bathroom. He shut himself inside, and through the door Becky could hear the sound of him retching. She imagined he would not be joining them at the dinner table.
But in his race across the living room, he’d met her gaze for the briefest moment. His eyes were bloodshot, glazed, as dark as two black holes sucking in all the light and life they could gather. In all that darkness, she saw his fear, his dread, his desperation.
And his promise. In that one instant, she’d seen the word okay.
Apra apra dida may. Mark said okay.
Chapter Thirty-Three
HE WOULDN’T go to a church.
Becky and Elyse’s friend Florie had freaked him out with all that Jesus stuff. If Mark had been an observant Jew, living the life he’d been instructed to pursue during all the dreary hours he’d spent in Hebrew school preparing for his bar mitzvah, he wouldn’t have felt comfortable confessing his sins in the basement of St. Whatever or Holy Hoo-Ha or Our Lady of Drunken Assholes.
But by the time he’d finished banking the thousands of dollars he’d netted in bar mitzvah gifts, he’d been pretty much done with Judaism, as well. Sure, he could fake his way through a Seder, he could swap Hanukkah presents with his family, he could probably still recite the Hebrew alphabet if forced, but religion just didn’t resonate with him.
He didn’t doubt that there was something bigger than him in the universe, some power greater than that of humans. Maybe it was gravity. Maybe entropy. Maybe God.
God wasn’t the same thing as religion, though. Churches, mosques, synagogues, ashrams—that was all religion. Not God.
And he wasn’t looking for God, anyway. He was doing this because Becky . . .
Shit. Because she’d somehow extracted a promise from him.
She’d found a meeting for him in a building on the MIT campus. The Tang Building, she’d told him, which made him wonder if he’d have to drink a cloying orange powdered beverage. Maybe that stuff wouldn’t taste so bad if it was mixed with vodka instead of water, but part of the promise was that he would stop drinking. And he had, about twelve hours ago. He’d polished off a bottle of no-name vodka last night before bed, slept like death, and awakened with a grinding headache and a sour taste on his tongue, both of which he knew he could remedy with a little more vodka, or even a beer.
He’d drunk a cup of tea, instead, eaten a cold, stale bagel he’d found in the fridge, and survived an hour-long lecture on the European financial crisis, all the while wondering how he’d wound up enrolled in a class about international monetary policy. Elyse should be taking the class instead. She kept talking about her plans to travel to Paris. The stability of the euro was her problem, not his.
He’d somehow made it through the class sober, then hiked across the bridge to Cambridge, miraculously managing not to get sprayed with murky slush by the cars cruising past. For absolutely no good reason, he’d expected Becky to be waiting on the other side of the bridge for him, but of course she wasn’t, of course she wouldn’t be. Why she even cared about his attending this stupid meeting was beyond him.
She did care, though. She cared enough to have texted him a room number in the Tang Building, twelve noon.
Cambridge was a city like Boston—shorter, with more air, more space and light, but still just a city, crowded with pedestrians and shops and too much traffic. Yet on the rare occasions when he crossed from the Boston side of the river to the Cambridge side, he’d always felt he’d arrived somewhere more prestigious, more exalted. Boston had plenty of college folks, but Cambridge had Harvard and MIT folks. He felt like an interloper on this side of the river, a loser who’d spent six years at BU and still needed three credits to graduate.
Without Becky to guide him, he headed down Memorial Drive, phone in hand and GPS app turned on. The Tang Building was big and boxy, right angles and rigid lines. He entered, certain that all the students and faculty members swarming along its corridors would know he didn’t belong there and shove him back outside.
They ignored him. Maybe he was invisible.
If the meeting really sucked, he could jump out a window. No one would notice the escape of an invisible man, except for the sudden draft of winter air that would fill the room when he slid the window open.
He located the meeting room, stuffed his phone into a pocket of his jeans, and entered. And realized that this was not some exclusive AA for scientific gen
iuses and students who’d earned stratospheric scores on their SATs. One of the men milling about in the room wore a campus security uniform. Another was clad in worn khakis and a thick shirt with his name stitched above the pocket; a leather loop holding a few dozen keys jangled from his belt. A chubby middle-aged woman in wool slacks and a sweater. An acne-scarred teen with blond dreadlocks. A girl in a black leather mini skirt, black tights, and black boots adorned with silver studs. A tall, gray-haired guy in a dark turtleneck, a jacket, and corduroy trousers that sagged at the knees—a professor, or an actor impersonating one.
The room’s decor was nondescript, and the air smelled of overcooked java; a coffee maker sat on a table against one pale wall. Mark’s stomach panged. He should have eaten something more than that one dry bagel. If he drank coffee, it would slosh around in his empty stomach. He searched for a jar of Tang next to the coffee machine. Surely that crap had more nutritional value than the coffee.
No Tang.
He headed for the coffee maker, angling his face down, trying to remain inconspicuous. Anonymous, that was the key word here. He wasn’t an alcoholic. He drank a lot, yes, because when he didn’t he had to embrace who he was and what he’d done, and that hurt too much. But it wasn’t as if he had tremors or hallucinations. It wasn’t as if going without a hit of booze for the past twelve hours was causing him to endure the agonies of withdrawal. He drank not because he was addicted, dependent, suffering from some weird brain chemistry, but because liquor deleted his thoughts and getting through the day was easier when he was numb.
Next to the coffee maker sat a stack of cardboard cups and a plastic bowl containing sealed thimbles of creamer and flat envelopes of sugar. He lightened and sweetened his coffee, hoping the additives would quell his hunger. No one approached him, no one acknowledged him. He settled back into the comfort of invisibility as he turned from the table and searched for an empty chair.
“Hello,” said the professor.
So much for invisibility. Mark nodded and mouthed the word hello, but no sound came out of his mouth.
“My name is Phil,” the professor said, extending his right hand and waiting patiently while Mark transferred his coffee to his left hand so they could shake hands. “We don’t really have leaders here, but I’m a kind of quasi-leader.”
Quasi. Definitely a professor.
“Mark,” Mark introduced himself. He was not going to say, “Hello, my name is Mark, and I’m an alcoholic,” and then smile while everyone else in the room chorused, “Hi, Mark!” He’d seen movies, skits, spoofs, and he had no idea if they accurately depicted how these meetings went. But he wasn’t going to recite the standard script. He was here, he was drinking coffee. That was enough.
“We’re a pretty informal group,” Phil continued. “Just take a seat. We’ll be getting started soon.”
The guy with his name stitched above his pocket—Jorge, Mark read—was arranging the chairs into a circle. Maybe Jorge was here only to move the chairs around, some sort of union thing that required a certified janitor to arrange the furniture. But no, once the circle was complete, Jorge planted himself on a chair, his keys jangling like stunted wind chimes.
Once one person was seated, everyone else settled into chairs as well. Musical chairs in reverse, Mark observed—there were more chairs than people.
Phil the quasi-leader cleared his throat. “Hello, everyone,” he said. “Let’s start with the serenity prayer.”
Everyone in the circle bowed their heads. No church, Mark thought, but he was still going to get stuck praying. Except that he didn’t know the prayer they all recited, something about courage and wisdom and serenity. He closed his eyes and let the drone of their voices wash over him.
When they were done, Professor Phil said, “We have a newcomer here.” He gestured toward Mark, who reflexively slumped lower in his chair “Do you want to tell us a little about yourself?”
So much for anonymity and invisibility. So much for flinging himself through a window.
He sipped his coffee, eyeing the circle of people over the rolled rim of the cup. “I’m Mark,” he mumbled, then coughed and tried again. “I’m Mark. I’m here because I promised a . . . ” A what? What was Becky? Not a friend, really. More than an acquaintance. “A woman I know . . . anyway, I promised her I’d come. I’m not sure I belong here.”
This comment was greeted with indulgent chuckles. Evidently, everyone else in the room thought he belonged there.
“Anyway, I’m here.” He shrugged as if to say he was done.
“When did you have your last drink?” the leather girl asked.
So much for thinking he was done. “Twelve hours ago,” he said, then glanced at his watch. “Twelve and a half hours ago,” he corrected himself, hearing an edge of defiance in his voice. Some of these folks might think twelve and a half hours was nothing. Some of them might have had their last drinks a month ago, or a year, or a decade.
To his surprise, they applauded. “That’s how you start,” Professor Phil said. “One day at a time.”
“Even if you don’t think you belong here,” the dowdy woman in the knit slacks and sweater said.
“Ha,” Jorge barked. “He belongs here.”
As if Jorge knew him. As if Jorge knew a single fucking thing about him.
But Mark kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want to talk about himself, about why he drank, what he’d done, why, even twelve and a half hours sober, he still thought wistfully of standing on a roof and looking down.
After a few long seconds of silence, Professor Phil said, “Well, we’re glad you’re here, Mark.”
And that was that. Someone announced that today marked his tenth anniversary of sobriety. His announcement prompted more enthusiastic applause than Mark’s had, and Mark found himself clapping as well. Then the dowdy woman spoke for a while. She said she’d had a bad mammogram and needed to undergo a biopsy, and she was desperately afraid that fear and tension might make her reach for a martini. The group discussed strategies to get her through this health crisis without a drink.
Mark felt sympathetic, but hell—having a biopsy wasn’t the same thing as killing a fifteen-year-old girl.
The kid with dreadlocks talked about being lonely because he couldn’t hang out with his posse anymore, since they all drank. A reed-thin man whose eyeglass frames seemed wider than his face announced that he’d started dating again. A woman about Mark’s age with frizzy red hair fretted that she had become addicted to chewing gum—sugar-free, at least—and she was worried that substituting one addiction for another wasn’t getting to the root of her problems.
The conversation was interesting, Mark had to admit. Kind of like a warped party. He wasn’t sure the people in the circle made more sense than the people at the parties he attended, although they mumbled less and smelled like soap and deodorant and coffee rather than booze and reefer. Their eyes were clearer, too.
At the end of the meeting, he felt pretty much as he had at the beginning, except that he was one hour hungrier. The shadow of his headache lingered, but the coffee, despite being strong enough to strip paint off a car, soothed his throat. These people were not his people; he couldn’t imagine becoming friends with them. Then again, he didn’t have many friends, anyway. Remy, off in Africa somewhere. Elyse, but that whole friendship was so fucked up, he had no idea what it was about. Becky . . .
Whatever.
Before he left, Professor Phil pressed a business card into his hand. He panicked, thinking he’d misguessed the guy’s profession, and Phil was in fact a salesman hoping to make a few bucks in commission off Mark. Did salesmen use the word quasi?
But all the card said was Phil’s first name and a phone number. “If you feel like having a drink,” Phil said, “phone me first. Okay?”
Mark stared at the card.
“That’s my cell phon
e. I always have it with me, and I always have it turned on. So phone me if you feel the urge. Okay?”
That insistent punctuation—okay? okay?—jabbed Mark, sharp as an elbow to the ribs. “Okay,” he said, wondering what would happen if he phoned Phil while the man was teaching a class in a crowded lecture hall. Assuming he was a professor. Or while he was about to seal a deal, assuming he was a salesman. It occurred to Mark that Phil’s offer of 24/7 availability was pretty damned generous, especially since they were strangers. Quasi-strangers, Mark conceded.
He shuffled out of the room, stuffing Phil’s card into a pocket of his jacket. He felt another card in there. Frowning, he pulled it out.
Find God’s love at the Jubilee Center, it said, along with an Amherst, Massachusetts address, a phone number, and a cross with beams and sparkles emanating from it. Where the fuck had that come from?
He experienced a vague memory of another card with a message from Jesus. Some chick had given it to him. He couldn’t remember much about her, or about the card. He’d probably been drunk at the time. His explanation for everything he didn’t remember: he’d been drunk.
God couldn’t possibly love a drunk. But Phil wasn’t God. Mark tucked Phil’s card deeper into his pocket.
Reaching past his jacket, he dug into the hip pocket of his jeans and pulled out his wallet. Could he survive the walk back to Brighton without eating, or would he have to find food on this side of the river? All the cool places to eat were further up Mass Avenue, on the Harvard side of Cambridge. Harvard students were artsy, rich gourmets. MIT students were nerds. He hadn’t noticed any eateries during his walk to the Tang Building.
He noticed the thin blond girl by the stairs, though. He noticed her angular face, the scarf yoked around her neck, the baggy cargo pants and clunky rubber-bottomed leather boots. The jacket he’d barfed on, now clean and slightly wrinkled from its recent laundering. The eyes, magnified by the lenses of her glasses. Assessing eyes. Critical eyes. Watching for him.
The April Tree Page 26
