Other Broken Things (9 page)

His dark skin and bald head make him look tough on the outside, but that pales in comparison to how he is on the inside. Unflappable. Nothing bothers him. His mother could die and he'd be back at work the same day. For a long time I thought he didn't have any emotions. But the day I showed up drunk after months of being MIA, I knew he did. I'd never seen him so pissed.

“So you coming back to train for real?”

I look at my feet and shake my head. When I glance up I see Jerry wave Josh away. Josh nods at me and squeezes my shoulder. “Good to see you, Nat.”

I nod back but can't push words past the lump in my throat.

“Do you want to talk to me?” Jerry asks.

“No,” I whisper.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I don't know.” It was a bad idea. This isn't an option. It's not in the cards for me. But God, I miss it so much.

“Still not ready then. Suit yourself. Don't come back again unless you mean it. I don't like surprise visitors.”

For a second I think I see disappointment on his face, but then his expression drops back into his hard mask. I nod my head and move toward the door. My feet feel like they have cement blocks strapped to them. I never should have come.

My hands are shaking as I start my car. I squeeze my eyes shut and then slam on the accelerator and speed out of the gym parking lot. I'm going way too fast for the ice on the road, but I can't slow down. I'm dizzy with the need to fight, but there's nothing I can do. I light a cigarette and inhale three times before I have enough sense to pull over.

I call Joe without thinking too hard about it.

“Where are you?”

“Natalie. Good to hear from you. I'm at a job site. Everything okay?”

His voice is strangely soothing and allows me to take a deep breath. “Yes. No. I don't know. I guess. I had a fight with my mom.” I almost tell him about the gym, but I'm not sure how much I want Joe poking around in my past.

“Do you want to meet me here? I'm almost done with the job. We could get coffee.”

“Yeah. Okay. Will I be bothering you? I don't want to get you fired.”

He laughs. “It's fine. I'm my own boss. I won't get fired. Do you know the empty lot on Madison where the gas station used to be?”

“Yeah.”

“That's where I am. I'll wait for you.”

I'm about to click off, but at the last second I remember to say “Thanks.”

“Yep.”

*  *  *

Fifteen minutes later I'm out of cigarettes and standing on the edge of a large empty lot, leaning against Joe's pickup truck.

“What exactly do you do?” I vaguely remember his business card, but this seems like a good conversation starter.

He smiles and a little more of the tension eases out of me. “Well, the people who bought this lot are going to build a child-care center on it. And they're interested in making it as eco-friendly as possible: using recycled materials, collecting rainwater to use later for watering the garden, heating it using the earth's resources.”

I have no idea what any of this has to do with Joe, but I just want him to keep talking so I can forget the gym, Jerry's words, and my mom telling me I don't know how to say stop.

“Anyway, I'm a geothermal specialist. I work on developing heating and cooling systems using the earth's core to regulate temperature. So I mostly work with contractors and architects.”

“You're an eco guy? Really?”

He laughs. “Yeah. Really.”

“Huh.” There's a pause and I try to put this new information into the file I'm making in my head on Joe, but it doesn't quite fit. “Well, Joe, to be honest, that's sort of unexpected. I mean, not to be a dick, but were you doing this before you were drinking? Because this seems pretty ambitious and a little hard to pull off if you're stumbling around trying to shake off a bender.”

“Yeah. That's true. But I've met drunks who were doctors and lawyers and all sorts of ambitious professions and somehow they faked it for a lot of years. Though in my case, I learned about all this stuff after. First with some books I found in the prison library, and then afterward I went to school for it.”

I want to step into his space again, but I don't have the energy to mess with him. I need someone to talk to and in this moment he's the best I've got. “So.”

“So?” He waits and I don't know what to say now. Not that I'm tongue-tied so much as I'm tired and it feels like too much. He must see it because he says, “Let's go to the oasis and get some coffee. We'll come back for your car later.”

He opens his passenger door and helps me in. Nothing flirty, just a sturdy hand on my arm. He slips into the driver's side and pops open the glove compartment to a pack of Parliaments.

I take one and inhale deeply, looking out the side window at the gross Chicago winter gray. There's silence for a long while and I consider asking him to turn on the radio, but instead I say, “My mom says I don't know how to say stop.”

“Is she right?”

I shrug. “I haven't really thought about it. I mean, why stop? Drinking's fun. It's relatively harmless. A lot of people do it.”

He nods and maneuvers his truck into the oasis. “Does it seem the same when you do it as when they do it?”

I turn toward him. “What do you mean?”

He opens his door and then comes around to my side to let me out. Like we're on a date. Which, weird. “For me, I always thought we all drank, so it wasn't a big deal. It was social. I was the life of the party. It was nothing. But then I noticed I'd be starting earlier than everyone else. Drinking longer. Way past the time when they'd quit so they could sober up to get home. And I saw how I was the only one who drank every day. I'd have friends who gave it up for Lent or for the month of February, or for a few months while they were training for a bike race, or whatever. But me, I couldn't imagine giving up for that long. I mean, I'd wake up and think, I'm gonna dry out today, but by noon, I'd be at it again. And once I had one, I was off. No stopping mechanism on me.”

A chill runs through me and Joe pulls off his wool cap and drops it on my head, pulling it tightly over my ears.

“You need to wear hats. You got a lot of hair, but that's not going to protect you in the winter.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Cut that out.”

He holds the door to the oasis open and I lead him in. “What?”

“Stop calling me Dad. I feel old enough around you.”

I smirk. “Should I go with Pops instead?”

“You're hilarious. How do you like your coffee?”

“With a lot of sugar and a lot of milk.”

He rolls his eyes. “Of course.”

When he gets back to the table, I've warmed up enough to return his hat and peel off my coat. He takes his coat off too and sits across from me.

“Was your DUI the first time you tried to get sober?”

He shakes his head. “No. But it was the first time I got serious about it. I sort of had no choice, being in prison. Terrible case of DTs for my first five days there. And the Illinois Department of Corrections isn't very forgiving of drunks. I had to suffer on my own. Didn't get out of bed, didn't eat, just had to wait them out. It was almost enough for me to never drink again. But of course, I backslid a bunch of times after I got out.”

I take a gulp of coffee and smile at how light and sweet it is. Perfect. Almost like hot chocolate. “What finally got you to give it up for good?”

He shakes his head. “It's a long story for another time. First I want to know how much you want it.”

“How much I want what?”

“To be sober.”

His stare is hard to look away from. And I know I'm going to have to be honest for both our sakes. “I don't really know. I don't want to be addicted to alcohol, but your story, Kathy's story, Alex's story, whatever, that's not me. My DUI wasn't a call for help, or me hitting rock bottom. I was stupid and drunk, driving someone home who was more stupid and drunk.”

“So.” He folds his hands in front of him. “I guess that puts you closer to Step One: admit you're powerless over alcohol and that your life has become unmanageable.”

I shrug.

“Are you even there yet?”

I close my eyes and remember the conversation with my mom. Remember what it was like when I boxed, how I didn't think I could ever re-create that high after I walked away from it. And how drinking got me pretty close to it. Then I think about the handy and the half-assed blowjob I gave Brent. The accident and the DUI. The orange juice and vodka I had in my water bottle almost every day of the past year. The Tylenol with codeine. The Breathalyzer on my car.

“Yeah,” I say finally. “I guess I'd say things are a bit unmanageable.”

He nods. No judgment, just Joe's solid impassive face. “Well, then, welcome to AA.”

I'm nine days sober
now and nine days since any of my friends at school have said one word to me. I've bumped into Camille a couple of times again, but she hasn't asked any more questions, just searched my face—probably checking to see if I'm sober—and walked on with her honors-track friends. Brent stares at me all the fricking time, but when I finally asked, “What the hell are you looking at?” he turned and walked away without saying anything.

He's waiting. I get that. Everyone's waiting. Part of me is sort of waiting too, if I'm honest. Waiting to figure out what is going to get me to drink again. Because every day I stand at my locker and count to ten and think: I should find Amy and Amanda and get a water bottle filled up with peppermint schnapps. That's festive.

Mostly the only thing that keeps me from doing it is Kathy's daily phone calls of cantankerous advice and Joe's texts. And Mom's goddamn Elf on the Shelf, which she now has hidden in the most ridiculous places imaginable: tampon box, in my bra drawer, in the cookie tin I keep eating from, in the jar of gum packs I constantly chew, in my carton of cigarettes. He's like the Jiminy Cricket of the Twelve Steps. And damn if I'm not sober partly because of his stupid plastic face.

I reread the chapter about agnostics in the
Big Book
. Kathy even let me fight with her about God and didn't care that I thought a lot of people were putting their eggs in a basket that had a giant hole in the bottom of it. She only shrugged and said, “It's an awfully big world for you to assume everything in it has to do with you.” Which, whatever, okay.

I've worked another pancake breakfast, and Joe and I amused the people going through the line with our arguments over every stupid thing: sausages or bacon, Cubs or Sox, chocolate or vanilla, red or black licorice. By the end I realized he was disagreeing just for the sake of pissing me off—no one chooses black licorice over red—which made me want to fling syrup at him. But the five hours went by really fast.

On sober day ten I'm walking out of school when I see Brent, Amy, and Amanda waiting at the bike racks. My feet slow as I approach them.

“How's it going, Nattie?” Amy says. Her hair is up and she's not wearing a hat and I can't believe she's not freezing because it feels to me like my fingers are about to fall off.

“Good. What's up?”

Amanda stands and sways a bit, which answers the question as to why they don't seem to be cold. “My parents are out for two days. I'm at home with my brother, but he's already disappeared. Wanna come over?”

Amanda's brother is fifteen and doesn't ever talk to us. He plays video games in his room and treats everyone like crap. Amanda says he's been like that since his girlfriend cheated on him. I suspect he's been like that since birth.

“I gotta go to a meeting.”

Amy snort-sighs. “Come on. Skip it. We'll fake a signature on your court card. They don't really check those anyway.”

Which is probably a good point and I'm surprised I haven't thought of this myself. But still, as much as I could use a drink, boozing with the A's is not appealing.

“I'll pass. You guys need a ride, though?” Because really, they're still my friends and none of them look like they're in any shape to drive.

Brent steps up. “No. I got my car.”

He's not swaying, but his eyes definitely aren't the most clear they've ever been. This is hardly my problem. Two months ago I wouldn't have given the first shit. Two months ago I would've driven, probably way more wasted than any of them are now. But frickin' Joe and his drive into the White Hen and my accident with the stop sign are too fresh in my mind.

“Give me your keys. I'll take you.”

Brent holds his keys up and I reach for them, but he snatches them away. “You're not driving my Escalade. Come on, girls.”

Amy and Amanda stumble after him, and I dig through my pockets for my keys. I'm going to have to follow them now. Jesus.

I'm heading toward my car when Mrs. Hunt calls out to me. I scan to see how far Brent and the girls have gotten, but they're still fumbling outside Brent's car, snorting and giggling.

“It's not a great time, Mrs. Hunt.”

Her mouth pinches when she approaches. “I'm sorry I don't fit into your busy schedule. But we need to have a conversation about your incomplete assignments. I'd like to set some expectations about dates and how to get you caught up to the rest of the class.”

Brent slides into the driver's seat and the A's tumble into the back. My gaze returns to Mrs. Hunt and I can see she's watching them too. And I can see every thought she's having, but I frankly don't care. She can think what she's going to think. I need to follow Brent.

“Yeah, Mrs. Hunt, we can have that conversation. Just not right now. I'll come to see you tomorrow after school, okay? I gotta go.”

“I'm going to have to start giving you zeroes, Natalie. Don't you care if you graduate?”