Divine Intervention

by Francis Gideon

  “To wake up and detox you,” she said with a smile. Her voice was much softer than it usually was. She clapped her hand on Evan’s shoulder too. In that moment, Evan felt as if they were acting as his surrogate parents. His proverbial angel and devil on his shoulder, telling him the good and the bad about himself. With Sarah’s blonde hair and penchant for white clothing and blouses, this wasn’t too far off.

  “Thanks.” Evan smiled at her.

  “Now,” Liam repeated. “Are you okay with stopping drinking?”

  “Forever-ever?”

  “Yes and no,” Liam said, and this was where Evan really began to trust his opinion and understand what was going on. “For the next three months? Yeah, probably. We need to get you to break bad habits. But for the rest of your life? Here is where I divide on that whole AA bullshit. An intervention is useful to call out bad patterns. But I can’t protect you from the rest of the world. You can’t protect yourself from it. There will be accidents. There will be parties. Who knows, ten years from now, you may want to drink at your wedding.”

  There were a few snickers, including Evan.

  “Hey, it will be legal. And if gay marriage isn’t legal in that year, then for shame. We’ll have a party anyway so you can drink there. But do you see what I mean, right?” Liam furrowed his eyebrows, for once showing his uncertainty about the whole affair. He began to quote from someone else, a common habit he had picked up working with books for so long. He fell on the printed word for more substantive arguments. “‘Everything in moderation—including moderation.’ Those big rules that AA set up only make drinking more alluring. But I’m getting ahead of myself.”

  Evan nodded, trying to take it all in. “So what is this, exactly?

  Liam smiled. “This is merely a gathering of friends. An intervention, sure, but you don’t need to call it that. We’re just all happy to see you and think we should catch up.”

  Though it had taken a while, Evan warmed up to the idea. He began to see the room through a different pair of eyes. Not meaningless people who were there to poke him and take pity on him, but friends who cared about every part of him. He scanned the room, focusing more on who had showed up. He allowed himself to feel slightly sad that in spite of how many people filled up the space, there was no one he could call his own.

  “Yeah,” Evan said, turning back to Liam. “I’ll try.”

  “Good,” Liam said. “It won’t be easy. But that’s why we’re all here, okay? Don’t play a strong man when you think you should. Call us. We’ve all written our numbers down and are giving you business cards and whatever else you need.”

  Evan looked down, not in shame this time, but in relief. He nodded, swallowing whatever ball had risen in this throat. He wanted to say Thank you, but the words didn’t come out. Liam leaned down to eye level with Evan and gave him a hug instead. It seemed to be enough.

  For the rest of that afternoon, Sarah stayed by Evan’s side. She fed him more coffee and water, and then a few slices of pizza when the food arrived. Liam wandered around the room, gathering those calling cards and thanking people for their presence. Counting Evan’s parents and his three sisters, there were about as many people inside the small, cramped apartment as at his last Christmas meal. But everyone here looked him in the eye. Said his name out loud and asked how he was. Even Nate’s boyfriend, a young skittish kid who seemed almost as shy as him, talked to him for more than fifteen minutes. All of a sudden, everything that Evan had kept inside began to come out. Not confessions of his family’s pain, or the bad stuff that happened to him when he was six. But minutia of his daily life in the city. What subway he took and the strange people he saw. His favorite pizza topping and music he liked. But these small things had been what he thought no one would care about. As Sarah and then Lindsey’s eyes lit up as he talked, he began to convince himself of something different. His life was interesting or could be, given the right people. He still didn’t have someone to share this everyday world with, but he had his friends. That, for a time, could be enough.

  By the time the night was over, Evan was exhausted. He slept on Liam’s couch that night, the saint necklace moving closely against his skin.

  * * * *

  Now, inside of Liam’s apartment and on the same blue couch, Evan repeated his friends’ words in his head. There will be a time and a place where you’ll drink again. That’s just life. But don’t let it destroy or define you.

  Bart’s eyes scanned Evan’s nervously. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “I don’t exactly know what you’re expecting,” Evan said with a smile. He moved both beer bottles to the far corner of the table and grabbed the half-empty bowl of snacks instead. “You think I’m going to Hulk out because I had a drop or two of alcohol?”

  Bart shrugged. He eased back into his seat, a small eye still kept on Evan. “I just figured, like with Mormonism, the first breaking of the rules is always like a whirlwind. I got so wired on coffee during that road trip, you have no idea.”

  Evan laughed aloud. Out of all the beverages to make as your first in the free new world, coffee was an interesting temptress.

  “Only you, Bart, could think that coffee was ambrosia. I get what you mean, though. But don’t worry. I’ll be able to control myself.”

  Bart nodded, not wanting to question or poke the elephant in the room anymore. Evan felt his skin crawl in the silence that followed. He struggled for another bad joke or something else to say. He swallowed, his throat dry again. He touched his chest, remembering the martyr around his neck and his mother who still never called. He tried to change the subject.

  “I can’t believe when you were Mormon you had to give up all of this. More than just alcohol, but Coke and everything…well, good.”

  Bart was quiet, a soft edge to his movement and voice. When Evan looked back at him, he looked down, as if in shame.

  “Not to say anything bad about it. I mean. I just. I have no willpower and I’m always impressed when people can give stuff up. You know Nate’s boyfriend was vegan? That, too, is ridiculous to think about. I don’t think I could ever do it.”

  “It’s easy when you’re dedicated. You put ideas above actions, and then suddenly the world makes sense.” Bart paused, reconsidering. “Made sense.”

  Evan nodded. Even though he sometimes hated religion and what it did to people, especially the far right Christian in the U.S. who picketed at gay men’s funerals, he did understand the power of it. You had easy rules to follow. Every single philosophical document up until this point had been trying to do the same thing: find a way to live inside of a world that often made no sense.

  “Sometimes, it’s easier,” Evan added. He paused, looking Bart up and down. “Do you still consider yourself Mormon? Even when you’re not there and practicing?”

  Bart shrugged. “Maybe?”

  “I thought you hated all of it, though.”

  “Hate’s a pretty strong word. I knew how much my family would tolerate and I knew what to do about it. They didn’t like that I was screwing the neighbor down the street, so I left. No big deal.”

  “I think it’s more complicated than that,” Evan said. “Aren’t all families?”

  Bart shrugged again. “Well, maybe. But Mormonism…I don’t know. I don’t know how to categorize myself. It’s actually a big gray area, even more than sexuality or whatever people call it. It’s hard for me to separate myself from it, you know. I grew up that way, Evan. Even if I don’t see my family that much, I don’t attend church, and I drink alcohol now, it doesn’t mean that I still don’t…remember things, you know?”

  “Do you believe in God?” Evan asked the question with a hesitant expression. This was always a touchy subject between people. But he felt, with the late hour and the vulnerability he just exposed with his accidental drinking, that he could risk it.

  “No,” Bart said after considering it a moment. “It’s a nice thought, but I’ve seen too many contradictions. But. I grew up with Him. Kind of li
ke losing a friend, you know?”

  Evan nodded. He could understand that type of longing to be around someone, even if they weren’t real. It was why kids had imaginary friends and why sometimes twins had their own secret language to talk to one another. Imagination was strong as a child, but you’re always told you need to grow up. There really wasn’t anything wrong with religion, Evan knew, aside from that whole thou shalt not lie with men thing. And then again, there were always new interpretations.

  “Everyone in life believes in something,” Bart went on, taking Evan’s silence as disapproval. “I mean, isn’t that why we have political parties, veganism, and anything else? Hell, the pride parade just as full of bullshit doctrine as religion.”

  Evan nodded, eyes wide in sympathy.

  “But we don’t call it religion. We just do what we want and wait for the rest.”

  Evan sighed. Waiting—he was always waiting for his parents to pay attention and give him the attention. He supposed, though he was technically still Catholic inside his small household, that his parents became a religion. Family did. And each time, he was let down.

  “Waiting for God…” Evan said, trailing off. Bart nodded.

  “Yeah, it feels like we’re waiting for someone that will never come. But what does it matter? It gives our life meaning.”

  Evan started to laugh, though he did see the virtue in Bart’s point. He had learned, from reading far too many books on existentialism in his night courses, that people needed to construct meaning in their lives in order to get past the drudgery of everyday ennui. Waiting in line and waiting for a phone call or the cable man only became bearable if you thought you were going to be rewarded. Most of the country thought God was a good thing to replace the void. Evan, on the other hand, enjoyed the films that took the endless waiting for a cable guy to come and made it into a porn film with a happy ending instead.

  “Or waiting for the lust disease,” Evan said aloud with a laugh.

  “Oh, get off that,” Bart said. “Liam’s not even here. You don’t have to suck up to him.”

  “That’s the point,” Evan said with another small laugh. “We’re waiting for Liam. We’re always pandering to him and waiting for him.”

  Bart rolled his eyes. He could clearly tell where Evan was going with his remarks, but Evan knew that Bart didn’t do well with clichés.

  “I get, I get it. And I’m the long-haired prophet he found wandering in the desert.”

  Evan raised his hand in a small defeat. “Okay, but you never really answered my question. Are you still Mormon?”

  Bart raised his hand and wiggled it back and forth to convey a sort of “half and half” remark. Evan nodded.

  “I get that. It’s hard to separate yourself from your past. But if it’s anything that Liam taught me at the intervention, it was that it’s possible to pick something else you know. Wait for something different.”

  Bart shrugged. He began to shuffle through the stacks of magazines and candy wrappers on the floor to find his phone. He chuckled and said, “Cleanliness is Godliness.”

  Evan had to hold his tongue to not complete the lyric from the Smashing Pumpkins. Bart moved into the kitchen again, checked the stove the same way Evan had done earlier, and then headed back to his seat. He brought two non-alcoholic beers this time, handing one to Evan and one for himself.

  “Why must you punish yourself?” Evan teased, accepting the drink.

  Bart shrugged. “I was curious.”

  “Curiosity will get you into a lot of trouble.”

  Bart laughed. “You already sound drunk.”

  “Maybe. It doesn’t really matter if I am. There have been studies done on the placebo effect as far as alcohol goes. People only have to think they’re drunk for their guard to be let down.”

  “Fair enough.” Bart took a long sip. He held the liquid in his mouth for an extended time period and then gave a small half-hearted grin.

  “This isn’t too bad. If I didn’t already know, I’d think it was real.”

  “Funny how things like that work.”

  Bart eyed Evan from the side. Evan’s heart jumped in his throat, the slight buzz from the few sips of real alcohol already having an effect on him.

  When the two of them finally looked away, Evan grabbed the controller from the table. He picked up the package of Heavy Rain and attempted to restart the game to play again. Bart glanced at his watch, and verified it with the next appliance in the kitchen that was working. Nearly midnight now.

  “My God,” Bart said, exasperated. “Where is Liam? Bad jokes aside.”

  “Who knows?” Evan said, serving his body as if he was part of the avatar on screen. “He could be at another intervention.”

  The idea hit the room softly, implying more than either man wanted. Bart took out his phone and texted him again, while Evan died on screen.

  “Do your mom and family know where you are now?”

  Bart sighed with a long nod of his head. “Yeah, kind of. She sent me a letter a while ago.”

  “And…” Evan asked. The avatar waited at a doorway for Evan to move inside. Bart was still silent, trailing off from what seemed to be his initial point.

  Quoting his mother’s words, Bart said, “‘You live your life and I’ll live mine. Maybe one day, we’ll converge.’”

  “That’s kind of cold,” Evan remarked, especially since it sounded as if his mother was implying that maybe Bart would get into heaven, or maybe he wouldn’t and he’d have to live with the consequences.

  “I thought it was kind of sweet,” Bart disagreed. “At least for her. She’s an engineer. Probably wants us to be perpendicular and not parallel.”

  “Is that what she’s said?”

  “In the past. When my father wasn’t looking,” Bart said with a smile. He motioned with his hands, imitating the best he could his mother’s soft way of speaking. “Bart, we love you all. But like some lines in a graph, we never seem to meet or agree on anything. You do whatever you want, outside of the family, outside of the graph. Maybe, as the times change and we change our shape, we can meet up again. Become perpendicular and not parallel. We can meet at a corner.”

  “That is sweet.”

  “Yeah, it kind of is.” Bart crossed his arms over his chest. “Even if those perpendicular lines meet only once and then run on endlessly. At least there is the once.”

  Chapter 5

  The first time Bart and Evan met, they ran parallel of one another. Ever since the intervention, Evan had been trying to get his life back on track. That meant putting in more time and energy at the grocery store where he worked at to win back their trust. It also meant taking more night school classes on philosophy and English so he could come back from being a drop-out. He had become so busy in the few weeks succeeding the intervention that he didn’t have time to hang out with Liam. Evan had vowed to himself, after detoxing on the man’s couch for a week, that the next time he would cross the threshold, he would be a better man. So far, he had kept his word.

  “Transformation takes longer than a week, dear grasshopper,” Liam would remind him every so often through text messages, emails, or even messages left on his machine. “You need to slow down. It’s a marathon, not a race. And you’re not going to be able to win over some people. That’s their fault, not yours. The world, eventually, will work itself out.”

  Since Evan hadn’t stopped by for many visits with Liam, the other man was forced to show up at the grocery store or at Evan’s apartment to say hello. Both friends never admitted aloud that these were “check-ups” to make sure Evan wasn’t in a stupor. Evan knew that so long as Liam never found anything out of the ordinary, the silent nature of the supervision would remain just that—silent. Liam had been impressed with what he found so far. Evan’s apartment was clean for once.

  “Yeah, it turns out that scrubbing floors really makes me not want to drink,” Evan informed him one break at work.

  “See, it has the opposite effect on me. Cle
aning is so boring the only way I can get through it is to get hammered. But then I just make more of a mess with empties. I should hire you at my place. Lord knows Sarah would appreciate it.”

  Evan smiled, stacking some bananas on the produce aisle. “Give me five minutes, Liam, and we can go out.”

  Liam nodded, stealing a couple grapes off a pile in Evan’s cart and popping them in his mouth. “Love to, sweetheart.”

  In all the commotion around Evan getting clean, Liam hadn’t yet told him about Bart taking up residence on his couch. In retrospect, Evan knew that Liam was going to mention this “cute new boy” that he had picked up while he was coming home from work, but they never got around to it. As soon as Evan stepped outside, he drew out a cigarette and held up a hand to Liam.

  “Don’t give me shit for smoking.”

  “I won’t, young grasshopper.”

  “Stop that. I’m not a ninja and you’re no sensei.”

  “Yes, but I also was serious before. Transformation takes longer than a couple weeks. You’re doing good. Go ahead and smoke, so long as it keeps you in the game.”

  Evan blew smoke out of the side of his mouth, leaning up against the grocery store wall.

  “I mean, look at Kafka’s bug. The whole book was about metamorphosis and sudden change. And even his sister took longer than a week to accept him. But it happened. If a giant beetle could win someone’s affections, then you can get clean, Evan. Kafka’s uplifting like that.” Liam gave him a wry smile.

  “I’m very familiar with Kafka, Liam, thank you,” Evan said with a roll of his eyes. “But I want to do something better than this eventually, you know?”

  “Always striving for something better, I know. Just don’t treat your recovery like the Sisyphean rock?”

  Evan nodded again, impressed with the depth of Liam’s knowledge. In his night school classes, they were just touching on the existential philosophers that Evan had already learned about in school a few years ago. They had skipped right over Beauvoir too, while going on about Sartre, which had annoyed Evan more for its inconsistency than its implied distaste for Beauvoir. Evan’s eyes widened as Liam began to quote some more from those same philosophers, and with mention of Beauvoir’s not being born, but becoming a woman.