by David Poses
Then it’s Dennis’s turn. A vein bulges in his forehead as he talks about setting up trust funds for his daughters when they were born and liquidating them years later to pay for crack. Glancing at the tennis ball in his hand, he compares his obsessive-compulsive disorder to OCS (obsessive crack smoking). “Powerless over both,” he says. “Same thing.” In the middle of an anecdote about the restraining order his wife filed against him, he sidearms his tennis ball at the shirtless scab-picker after he let out a loud yawn.
“Richie, am I boring you? You fucking faggot.”
“Faggot? I’ll faggot you, you faggot-ass faggot.”
fourteen
Every weekday afternoon, Tim sends a small delegation to an outside AA meeting. He dispatches me on Friday with Dennis, Mike, and Robbie.
In the car, Dennis says this part of Florida is known as “recovery corridor,” owing to the high concentration of treatment centers. Competition is fierce in detox, rehab, and halfway houses, he says. A place in nearby Jupiter was caught offering hundred-dollar Visa gift cards to addicts for checking in.
The AA meeting is in a church basement. Forty or fifty men and women of all ages and races, some in suits and others in shorts and tank tops. A younger guy apologizes for the coffee delay while dispensing Styrofoam cups by a table that appears to be caving from the weight of two large, gurgling carafes. On a clear plastic tray covered with stained doilies, there’s a scattered smattering of crackers and corn chips and an upturned, hollowed-out green bell pepper filled with dip.
When the coffee is ready, plastic shots of cream and individual packets of every conceivable natural and artificial sweetener quickly disappear from a wicker basket. As the group stirs adulterants into coffee, a muscular older guy gets behind the podium and introduces himself. Alcoholic, twenty-two years sober. He thanks everyone for coming and makes a few announcements.
Another guy describes getting laid off yesterday and asking God for strength to get home without stopping at a bar or liquor store on the way. The room erupts in applause and “one day at a time” chants.
Dennis says, “It’s hard enough to drive by a bar when life’s peachy. When it’s not, fuggeddaboudit. Every day we hear guys who thought they could have just one beer.”
“That’s how all my relapses started,” Mike says.
“That’s how every relapse starts. There’s always a reason. Dog died. Wife left. Patriots lost. It’s fuckin’ Wednesday.”
Grilled chicken and rice for dinner. I sit with Mike and Dennis and two guys whose names I don’t know. Dennis asks me, “Do you really want to be here, or are you going through the motions just to shut Mom and Dad up?”
It takes a moment for me answer. “I don’t know.”
Dennis’s hands connect slowly in two loud claps. “Now, there’s an honest answer. Unlike your friend, Dickwad, over there.” He nods toward Steve in the kitchen.
Later, after everyone gathers in the main lounge to watch Law and Order, Steve and I sign ourselves out and walk to a convenience store. Toto’s “Rosanna” crackles out of a boom box behind the counter, and I admit it’s one of my guilty pleasure songs.
“Me too,” Steve says. “And it’s actually very complicated. Key changes from G-major to F-major and back, with a half-time shuffle drum pattern. Five parts. On paper, they shouldn’t work together, but they do.”
By the main entrance, the ground beneath a row of banyan trees is littered with butts. We’re sitting on the curved concrete benches when a security guy makes his rounds.
“It’s 9:55. Five minutes to curfew.”
Once the guard is out of earshot, Steve brings up the Juniper rehab center Dennis mentioned earlier. “Apparently, some local detox centers are so hard up they’ll give you dope so you’ll piss dirty and they can admit you.” Rubbing his hands together, he asks if I want to investigate.
I don’t immediately say yes, but it doesn’t take long.
At first, I worry Chessa isn’t getting my messages. Five days in, I worry she is getting them. I decide to call one more time and leave a message. Seconds after I hang up, the phone rings.
“Hello?”
“David?”
“Nana?”
“David?”
“Nana?”
“David, your mother told me you were in West Palm Beach.”
“Uh-huh.”
“At a place for drug addicts?”
Disappointing my grandparents feels far more severe than disappointing my parents. Especially my grandfather. That is the conversation I’ve been dreading.
“You know you shouldn’t do drugs, right?”
“I know.”
“Then what are you doing there?”
“I don’t really know.”
“We missed you last month when your mother and Daniel came down.”
“I know. I wish I could’ve been there.”
Steve skips downstairs and dances toward me. He mouths, Hang up.
“David?”
“Nana?”
“We want to see you. Take you to lunch. Do you need clothes? What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Hanging out with you.”
When I get off the phone, Steve reaches into his pocket and pulls out a scrap of paper. “Supposedly, this guy’s shit’s crazy pure. And he’ll meet anywhere, as long as we buy at least a bundle. Let’s call him. Got a quarter?”
“Now?”
“Oh, dude. Hesitation means no.”
“No, it’s just . . . I don’t want to tie up the phone. I just left a message for Chessa.”
“If your girlfriend’s anywhere like this, nobody’s telling her when you call.”
I go outside and take laps around the parking lot. I think about my mother. She used to say, “Life is about the choices we make and living with the consequences. If you want the car to go, put gas in the tank.”
All afternoon, I roast in the sun, pacing, smoking, debating. Is mental gymnastics the key to sobriety? Overthink relapsing until you tire yourself out?
Before dinner, I find Steve alone in his room, lying on the floor.
“I can’t do it. I can’t risk getting kicked out after my mom just flew to Minnefuckingsota to watch me get kicked out of Hazelden.”
Steve sits up, looking relieved. “Yeah, I threw the number away.” He compares our situation to the prospect of getting a blow job from an ugly girl. “You know it’ll feel good, but you know you’ll regret it later.”
“This proves we’re not powerless. We should call Nancy and let her know.”
He laughs.
The next morning, I wake to screaming. Sounds like Richie. I jump out of bed and race to the kitchen. Dennis is ramming his back against the wall, digging his fingernails into his tennis ball.
Tim stumbles into the building, his eyes open wide as if he’s trying to adjust contact lenses without touching them. Mike and JJ whisk him through the main living area into the other wing. I ask what’s going on. Dennis gives me a blank look and winds up and wings the tennis ball at the TV. Then he punches a hole in the wall.
Maybe Richie had a heart attack. But seconds later, Richie appears with a towel around his waist. He nods.
“Richie went to take a shower,” Dennis says. “He found Steve on the floor.” He lays his hands on my shoulders. “He’s dead, David. Motherfucker OD’d.”
I don’t know what to do or think. I return to my room and grab my Discman and just stand there, trying not to hear the yelling and movement and sirens and walkie-talkies. Everything hurts, like I’m stuck in a bumper car while an entire carnival bashes me on all sides.
Once it’s quiet, I go outside and sit on the curb. No idea how long I’ve been here when Nana’s blue Sebring pulls up. The top is down. My grandfather, Herbie, is driving. My cousins call him Poppa, but I started using his first name when I was six.
I hop into the back seat behind Nana. Wind blasts my face as she bombards me with restaurant options.
“Bimini Boatyard’s always g
ood. Or that new Italian place on the Intercoastal.”
My head is stuffy and throbbing. I make a random selection and ask if we can stop at a drugstore. “I think I’m coming down with something.”
Nana cocks her head to the side. “You don’t look sick.”
“Leave him alone,” Herbie says, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
We pull into the next strip mall, and Nana and I go inside CVS, where I grab a bottle of DayQuil and NyQuil off a shelf. Nana snatches them and reads the labels aloud, stumbling over the ingredients nobody knows how to pronounce. She asks the pharmacist to recommend a cold medicine without alcohol. I tell her I don’t have a problem with alcohol and the Quils are my go-to-remedies. Nana won’t budge.
At lunch, three guys in suits in the booth next to us yell about guacamole.
“Did I tell you or did I tell you? Best guac anywhere.”
“Sorry, but I went to a place in Phoenix last year that had killer fucking guac.”
The suits lick their fingertips and sweep up small shards of corn chips and graze them through the remaining guacamole in a volcanic rock bowl.
“David,” Nana says. “Are you going to eat?”
“Can I stay with you for a few days?”
“Why?” she asks, suspiciously.
“Of course,” Herbie says.
Nana asks if something is wrong with the place in West Palm Beach. I tell her it’s run by an evangelical Christian cult and I don’t need Jesus to stay clean. When I say “I’m never doing drugs again,” I know it’s a fact.
fifteen
A tennis ball tied to a string dangles from the ceiling in the garage. The car stops when the ball touches the windshield. Herbie’s side of the garage is a paint studio. He’s a Fauvist, in love with Vlaminck. His Pontiac is in the driveway.
Tim doesn’t push when I call and tell him I’m not coming back. I give him my mother’s address to ship my things. All I have are the clothes I’m wearing and my Discman and whatever CD happens to be in it. I flop on the bed in the guest bedroom and stick my face in a pillow, breathing in the familiarity—Herbie’s paintings on the walls, a stack of old photo albums I pore through during every visit, needlepoint pillows made by Nana. One is bright pink with “Phuque the Snow” in yellow.
Since I was a little kid, when the whole family converged at their house in Florida, I spent most of the time with Herbie. During the day, while everyone else was in the pool, he and I were in the garage. At night, while Mom, Daniel, and Nana watched TV with my aunt and uncle and cousins, Herbie and I sat outside. He’d point to stars and make up stories about life on Khakistan, where everyone wears tan pants. If a plane was in the sky, he’d say it was a UFO ferrying cigarettes and vodka and paintbrushes to distant galaxies. He loved to tell stories and encouraged me to find the story in everything.
We’ve been writing letters back and forth for years. When I was younger, he’d stick a twenty- or fifty-dollar bill in the envelope. As I got older, he started enclosing checks for a lot more, with spending suggestions: “This should be enough to sail around the world with an improper girl and 109 cases of cheddar cheese (ask the girl to provide suitable crackers).”
The smell of turpentine is strong in the garage, even with the window open. I sit on the hood of the golf cart, watching Herbie paint a frothy ocean of fat blue and white brushstrokes around a pencil sketch of a fisherman in a dingy. Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” plays on a paint-stained tape deck, wedged between art books and tubes of oil paint on a metal shelf. Rows of canvases lean against the wall, waiting for a turn in the rotation inside.
Herbie lays his paintbrush on the lip of the easel and takes a step back. He says Ralph, his twin brother, got addicted to morphine in the 1950s, after a bad car crash.
“He went through hell to clean himself up,” he says. “But he made it. You will too. I know you’ll turn this into something good, maybe write a book about it.”
“Maybe . . .”
“Why not? You’re a fantastic writer. You always said that’s what you wanted to be when you grew up.”
A little before five, Nana gives a stern look when Herbie reaches for a bottle of Smirnoff in the living room. She says, “Cocktail hour starts at five.” He glances at his watch periodically and at the bar—an ornately carved armoire he built when they lived in Yonkers. He had a woodshop, paint studio, and a darkroom.
At exactly five o’clock, Nana enters with a tray of cheese and crackers. She nods at the bar. “Okay already, Herbert. Jesus.” He pours a drink and gestures to a shelf of CDs—all classical titles. He asks what I want to listen to. I almost pick his favorite: Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. Instead, I choose Mozart’s Magic Flute.
Facing each other, on cushy leather swivel chairs, we reminisce about the hot summer night when I was eight years old and we saw Amadeus. The theater manager warned us that the movie was nearly three hours long and the air conditioner was broken. Herbie said it was an important movie, so we sweated through it.
Swirling a glass of vodka and ice, Nana says, “We never did drugs.”
“Bullshit. We smoked marijuana in Mexico in 1949.”
“Bah—it didn’t do anything.”
“You laughed yourself silly and ate two giant bowls of candy in five minutes.”
Nana says something about the pot roast and disappears into the kitchen. Herbie finishes his drink, pours another, and waves me to follow him down the hall to the guest bedroom, which doubles as his office. He flips on the light—there’s an illustration of a man holding open an overcoat on the switch cover. A rectangular cutout makes the switch look like a penis.
He pulls a folder from his desk. Inside are drawings I made when I was much younger and the autobiography I wrote in second grade, Full on Bread.
“Always thought it was a great title,” he says.
“Anytime we went to a restaurant, Mom used to tell me not to fill up on bread. But I never listened, and she never stopped me.”
“You missed a lot of main courses.”
Nana picks up bagels and lox before I’m awake. She makes me breakfast, and they take me shopping for shirts and pants and socks and underwear. And a Chicago Blackhawks hat—same as Steve’s. Later, I go for a walk by myself and listen to Nebraska—the only Springsteen album I own. Once I’m out of sight of the house, I light a cigarette and fall into “Reason to Believe.”
When the song ends, I drop the Camel and stomp it out. As a flurry of bright orange cinders rise from under my foot, I think Steve died so I would live. I think, I’m going to write a book about this experience and dedicate it to him.
The ashes turn black and scatter in a dense, sticky breeze. How could I be so arrogant? There is no omnipotent being, no master plan. I’m alive because of luck. It’s that simple.
Back at the house, Nana says we’re leaving for dinner at six. I ask Herbie for a razor and shaving cream.
“Check under the sink. On my side of the bathroom.”
I find what I need amid a wall of prescription medications, one on top of another. I turn on the shower, undress, and lock the door, then open the cabinet again. Most of the labels are faded and facing inward. I’m relieved not to see anything interesting, but I continue to look. On the top of a big bottle, “PAIN” is scrawled in marker. I can make out the pharmacy’s name and address and the contents: Darvocet. I shake the brown plastic bottle and run my finger over the peeling label.
Take one now to get it over with and deal with the guilt, or be distracted until I take one and deal with the guilt. I unscrew the cap and shake one of at least thirty oval red pills. One won’t kill me. I get in the shower, tip my head back, and wash it down with hot water.
Coming out of the bathroom, I hear Frank Sinatra, a different, upbeat version of “Fly Me to the Moon.” My grandparents are on the patio, sipping Smirnoff on the rocks. I ask Herbie who to call about a plane ticket home.
“You’re leaving already?” he says.
“I probably
shouldn’t stay too long. A couple days?”
Nana says, “It’ll be cheaper if we book a ticket a week in advance.”
Control isn’t the issue. Access is. No one would notice if the Darvocet vanished. I could take them all. I don’t. Just one a day.
On the morning of my flight, Herbie and I leave through the garage and get into his car. The canvas with the fisherman and dingy is now covered in paint. He drives me to the airport—just the two of us.
“This is a blip,” he says, idling at the curb on the departures level. “You have your whole life ahead of you. Whatever you do, I’ll always be there to cheer you on.”
We get out of the car and he holds me tightly and we say goodbye. I can’t be proud of myself for leaving forty Darvocet. There’s too much guilt over the seven. I want this feeling to go away and never come back.
I know what I have to do.
part two
1996
sixteen
A girl with short brown hair and big brown eyes comes into my dorm room singing to the Pixies’ “Hey” on the stereo. Christine. An unfiltered Lucky Strike in her left hand, a worn copy of Henry Miller’s Air Conditioned Nightmare in her right. She ogles my book collection, alphabetized by author on a tall, wide shelf.
“You a writer?” she asks.
I smile. Christine smiles back. “Thought so,” she says, reaching for Burroughs’s Junkie, facedown and open on my dresser. As she flips through the dog-eared pages, I try not to stare at the sliver of teal bra visible through a missed button on her white Oxford shirt.
“Think there were really farms like the place he went to to get clean?”
“If there were, they weren’t like the rehab I went to.”
Christine’s eyes widen. “You went to . . . What’d you . . . Wait. You don’t have to tell me if—”
