Spin (6 page)

Is the emoticon too much? Oh, who cares? He can
deal with it if it is. I send the email and slip the iTouch back into my bag,
hiding it in my dirty underwear.

It’s time for group.

G
roup
therapy takes place in the common room, which is in keeping with the hotel-like
feel of the lobby. Its main feature is a picture window that frames an amazing
view of the lake. Watching the sun play on the water, I feel a momentary urge to
get a running start and dive through the window into the black lake. The leap
would likely kill me, of course, but if I managed to get away, would they save
me or let me take my chances with whatever monsters lurk below?

There are a dozen metal folding chairs arranged in
a circle and a pot of strong-smelling coffee brewing on an oak side table that
sits next to the window. The chairs hold an assortment of men and women who look
in surprisingly good shape for a bunch of drug addicts and alcoholics. Of
course, this
is
a class of addicts who can afford to
go to the same place as TGND, so maybe they’ve never looked as depraved as the
addicts in the this-is-what-you-look-like-if-you-do-crystal-meth ads. But does
crystal meth care whose body it’s being snorted or injected into? Or do you
smoke crystal meth? I can never remember.

And speaking of TGND, where the hell is she?

A dumpy woman in her mid-fifties with chin-length
salt-and-pepper hair comes to greet me. She’s a few inches shorter than me and
has a round face.

“You must be Katie. Welcome. I’m Dr. Bennett, but
please call me Saundra.” I shake her soft, small hand. “Please take a seat—we’ll
be starting in a minute.”

I sit down in one of the remaining empty chairs,
suddenly nervous about what’s to come. Am I expected to talk on the first day?
And what the hell am I going to say, anyway? Won’t this group of hardened users
be able to see right through me?

Saundra calls the meeting to order. “All right,
everyone. Settle down. We’re going to be talking about coping mechanisms for
stressful situations today. But first, we have a new arrival, Katie.”

My nerves increase as ten pairs of eyes travel
toward me. Shit! I’m definitely going to have to talk today. Couldn’t I learn
some of those coping mechanisms first?

I raise my hand and give a little wave.

“I’d like to go around the room and have everyone
introduce themselves. Katie, you can go last. Ted, would you like to start us
off?”

They go one by one. Ted is a banker addicted to
cocaine and alcohol. Mary is a novelist addicted to heroin. There’s also a
pretty famous movie producer, a former child star if you use the term “star”
very loosely, a Fortune 500 executive, an up-and-coming director, an investment
banker, two lawyers, and a judge. Their addictions range from simple alcoholism
to drugs I’ve never even heard of. Did you know, for example, that if you take
fifty cold pills at once you start to hallucinate? Well, that’s what the
investment banker was doing every day until two weeks ago. Who knew?

As it nears my turn someone climbs into the chair
next to me. It’s TGND, Amber Sheppard in the flesh.

She’s wearing a bright green velour tracksuit that
matches her large eyes, and her black hair is in a tight knot on top of her
head. She’s much smaller than she looks on television (not more than five foot
one) and very thin. She’s not wearing any makeup, but her skin still glows with
youth and pampering. She looks odd, but beautiful.

And, oh yeah, she’s behaving rather strangely.

“Amber, what are you doing?” Saundra asks as TGND
plants her bare feet in the middle of her chair and crouches on her heels, her
arms up in front of her.

“Nothing.”

“We’ve talked about this, Amber.”

“My
name
is Polly the
Frog.”

So that explains the crouching position. And the
flitting tongue.

I look around. A few of the patients are laughing,
but most of them simply look annoyed.

“This isn’t acting class, Amber. Please sit in your
chair properly and introduce yourself.”

Amber’s cheeks flush with anger.
“Fine.”
She untucks her legs and sits in the chair.
“My name is
Polly,
and I’m a frog.”

“Amber, please.”

“OK, OK. My name is Amber.”

“And why are you here?”

“Because I was kidnapped by my parents and brought
here against my will.”

“Amber . . .”

“All right, all right. I’m addicted to alcohol and
cocaine.”

“Thank you. Katie?”

My heart starts to pound. I’ve always hated public
speaking.

“Hi. My name is Katie. I’m a writer, and
um . . . I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi, Katie!” says the group.

“Wrebbit!” says TGND.

Chapter 5

No Rest for the Wicked

A
fter group
I speed back to my room so I can get down as much of what I’ve witnessed as
possible. What I wouldn’t give for a microcassette recorder, or one of those
tiny hidden cameras that fit into your eyeglasses. But Bob thought it would be
too risky, so I’m left relying on my memory, never perfect in the best of
circumstances.

My roommate nearly gives me a heart attack when she
enters the room without knocking. I close the journal quickly, trying to appear
nonchalant. It feels like my heart is beating visibly out of my chest like in an
old Disney cartoon, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

Amy’s model-tall and beautiful. Her toffee-colored
skin matches her eyes, and her dark hair is tightly curled and chin length.
After I introduce myself, she starts to download the details of her life with
the ease of someone who’s been here for a while. She’s a lawyer who works at one
of the largest firms in the city. One too many cocaine-fueled deal memos landed
her an all-expenses-paid trip to the Cloudspin Oasis. She’s been here for
twenty-four days, and if all goes well, expects to leave six days from now.

We chat for a while, and then we have dinner
together in the cafeteria. It has a bistro-y feel to it, and another bank of
windows framing the green lawn that rolls out like a blanket toward the woods.
The view is breathtaking, but no one’s looking. Instead, everyone’s talking,
talking, talking about themselves. I look for TGND, but despite the “all
patients must attend all meals” rule, she’s nowhere to be seen.

The food is good, simple fare (spicy penne
arrabbiata, a tart Caesar salad), and after dinner we follow the crowd to the
common room to watch a cookie-cutter romantic comedy on the widescreen TV. When
the couple that’s meant-to-be finally gets together, there doesn’t seem to be
anything left to do but go to sleep, and so I do.

I
’m
dreaming a wonderful dream. I’m writing a cover profile about Feist, and I’m
meeting her backstage at the Grammys before she performs. A rainbow of musical
celebrities surrounds us. Paul McCartney is playing “Blackbird” for Adam Duritz.
Madonna is warming up for her duet with Fergie. Kurt Cobain’s daughter is about
to make her musical debut, singing backup for Lisa Marie Presley. None of it
makes any sense, of course, but I feel extremely happy nonetheless.

That is, until I’m awoken by the most ungodly
scream.

“AAAHHHHH!”

My eyes fly open, my heart pounding. By the
moonlight seeping through the window, I can see Amy tossing back and forth on
her bed, her mouth open.

I jump to the cold floor and put a tentative hand
on her shoulder. “Amy.”

“AAHH, AAHH!”

“Amy!”

“Get off me!”

I pull my hand away. “You were screaming.”

“Who are you?”

“It’s me, Katie. Your roommate.”

I turn on the light that sits on the night table
between our beds.

She blinks slowly. “Sorry. I was disoriented.”

“It’s OK. I think you were having a nightmare.”

“I wish. I was in a K-hole.”

“A what?”

“I was dreaming I was using.”

Oh. So “K” must be a drug. But what drug? Vitamin
K? Special K cereal with cocaine sprinkled on it?

I’m going to be unmasked soon, soon, soon.

“Right, of course . . . I hate those
kinds of dreams.”

I totally paused for too long between those two
phrases.

Amy sits up and runs her hands through her tightly
curled hair. Her eyes look unfocused. “That’s the understatement of the
year.”

Phew. She doesn’t seem to have noticed.

“Do you want some water? I could get it for
you.”

“No, thanks. I’m all right.” She pounds her fist
into the mattress. “Fuck! I’m so goddamn tired of this. Why doesn’t it get any
easier?”

“I’m sure it does.”

She looks at me bleakly.

“Sorry, what do I know? I just got here.”

“Right. I’m the one who’s supposed to be teaching
you how to cope.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know. But I should know something by now,
especially since I’ve been here before.”

“This isn’t your first time in rehab?”

“This is take three. Three strikes and you’re out,”
she mutters.

“How come it didn’t work before?”

She shrugs. “Choices I made. People I should’ve
stayed away from. Take your pick.”

“Why not try something else?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I’m just talking smack.”

She almost smiles. “Interesting choice of
words.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Thanks for waking me
up.”

She reaches out her hand and after a moment’s
hesitation, I take it. She quietly begins to cry, and the tears well up in my
own eyes.

Jesus. Four days in rehab, and I’m already crying
with strangers.

T
he
next morning at breakfast I don’t have much of an appetite, so I sip my coffee
while Amy digs into an omelet.

“Don’t worry, your appetite will come back in a
couple of days,” she says.

“Oh, I never eat much breakfast.”

“Have you had any tremors yet? Those are the
worst.”

I’m not quite sure how to play this. Should I admit
to tremors, or counter with something worse, like seeing imaginary bugs?

She’s not testing you, idiot,
she’s just making rehab conversation.

Right. Less paranoia would be good.

“Not yet. Anyway, I should get to my therapy
appointment.”

“Sure enough. See you later.”

I get a to-go cup for my coffee and ask for
directions to Saundra’s office.

Her office is oddly decorated with all things dog.
I mean,
all things dog.
There’s a dog calendar, a
dog clock, a couple of framed photographs of dogs, and a dog leash sitting on
the corner of her desk. The only thing missing is the actual dog itself. Or
maybe the leash is for me?

Saundra sits behind her large oak desk. I get
comfortable in her matching visitor’s chair as she explains that the Oasis’s
approach is to identify the root, internal causes of my alcoholism and to teach
me techniques that will allow me to solve problems without alcohol. If I trust
Saundra and work with her, I should acquire the skills I need to stay sober by
the end of my thirty-day stay.

I’m guessing the skills I really need to learn by
the end of my thirty-day stay aren’t what she’s talking about.

“Some patients need longer than thirty days, of
course, but given that this is your first time in rehab, and the level of your
addiction, which is severe but not chronic, it should be sufficient.”

“What do you mean by the level of my
addiction?”

“You scored a ten out of fifteen on the alcoholism
test.”

“Is that bad?”

“It’s a graduated scale. Answering yes to more than
five questions means that drinking is interfering in your life in a substantial
way, which is a sign of alcoholism.”

“And I got a ten?”

“Yes.”

Yowser, that is not good. But wait a second. Not
all those answers were really mine, right? At least three were what I told Dr.
Houston as my cover story. So my real score is probably
like . . . six. That’s nothing.

Saundra pulls a pad of yellow legal-sized paper
toward her. “Katie, I’d like to begin by trying to discover the origins of your
alcoholism. How old were you the first time you got drunk?”

“I was four.”

Her eyes widen. “Four years old?”

“I guess that’s kind of young, huh?”

“A little. Why don’t you tell me about it.”

“Well, actually, it’s a funny
story . . .”

It
was
funny. When my
parents finally extricated themselves from their commune-gone-wrong legal
problems, they decided to celebrate by holding a party. There was champagne, and
my dad poured me a small glass, a splash really, so I could join the toast.

I remember my first taste of that champagne. It was
sweet and delicious, like drinkable candy, and the bubbles felt ticklish on my
tongue. I loved it and I wanted more. So I asked for some, and my dad, already a
bit drunk, gave it to me. That disappeared as fast as I could drink it, and so
did the fuller glass I got from him a few minutes later when he wasn’t paying
attention.

Before I knew it, I was hammered. I felt like my
body was floating, and I lay happily in the grass feeling each individual blade
with the tips of my fingers. When the party broke up, my parents took us to a
restaurant for dinner. My tipsy parents didn’t realize there was anything wrong
with me until we got there. That’s when I thought it’d be a good idea to teach
my two-year-old sister, Chrissie, how to pull the tablecloth out from under the
dishes. I’d seen a magician do it on TV and he made it look easy. I remember the
horrible clatter of dishes, my father’s jumble of oaths, and my mother repeating
over and over, “Why would you do that, honey? Why would you do that?”

When they finally clued in that I was drunk—Dad
confessed to giving me “just a little taste”; Mom’s shriek of anger set half the
restaurant’s eardrums ringing—I was hauled out of the restaurant by my ear and
left in the family car to “sober up!”

When my parents calmed down, the whole thing became
a family joke. From that point on, whenever I’d act out, my dad would yell,
“Sober up!” and we’d laugh and laugh.

“Do you really think that’s a funny story,
Katie?”

Uh, yeah. I’ve brought people to tears with that
story on more than one occasion, but maybe you need a drink in your hand to
really appreciate it. Like therapy.

“Kind of.”

“Can you see why not everyone would think so?”

“I guess. They shouldn’t have been giving me
alcohol at that age, right?”

“Yes, that’s one thing. But don’t you also think
it’s problematic that they turned it into a family joke?”

“It’s not like I wasn’t punished.”

“By leaving you alone in the car?”

“I grew up around here. People always left their
kids in the car.”

Saundra writes a few words on her pad of paper in a
cursive script. “Were your parents neglectful in other ways?”

“What? My parents didn’t neglect me.”

“I’m sorry, Katie, a poor choice of words. What I
meant to say was, were there other times you got drunk as a child?”

A flash comes to me of a Thanksgiving dinner when
my mother was away visiting her parents. I was thirteen or fourteen, and
Chrissie, Dad, and I polished off several bottles of wine. A snowstorm kicked up
in the middle of dinner, and my sister and I ran out into the night to make snow
angels. We spread our arms wide, the fluffy snow giving way to our sweeping
arms. Dad sprang onto the front porch swinging a bottle and yelling, “I’ve got
the last of the wine!” We burst out laughing and couldn’t stop for what seemed
like hours.

I feel a wave of nostalgia for the fun Chrissie and
I used to have together. “Yes, but . . . those events were
harmless. They were fun.”

“I’m sure it seemed like fun at the
time . . . but do you think it’s possible that those early
experiences laid the foundation for your alcoholism?”

“Are you saying it’s my parents’ fault that
I . . . that I’m here?”

“Of course not. I’m merely exploring to see if we
can find the root of what led you here.”

There’s a knock at the door. Saundra glances at the
clock.

“I’m afraid that’s all the time we have for today.
We’ll pick this up tomorrow, all right?”

“Yeah, I guess.” I stand up to leave. “I don’t
think my parents did anything wrong. I mean, they were, are, great parents.”

She looks sympathetic. “I understand. I’ll see you
in group this afternoon.”

“Right, sure. See you in group.”

S
o, I
have a confession to make. I didn’t have only four mini bottles of Jameson and
Coke on the plane. There were a few drinks at the airport too.

Now, I don’t usually drink in the morning, but
there was something about that morning that felt out of the ordinary. It was a
combination of things, really. Seeing the tiny plane I was going to have to fly
in. Going undercover. Being about to meet a celebrity I’d been watching for
weeks on television. Having the opportunity to finally get where I wanted to be
as a writer. Going to rehab. It all balled up inside me, and I needed something
to calm me down. The chamomile tea I had before I left for the airport wasn’t
cutting it, so I headed to the always-open airport bar and ordered a gin and
tonic.

And it worked. When the drink was gone I felt
better. I felt steady. I felt ready.

Then the flight got delayed because of mechanical
problems (Mechanical problems? Shouldn’t they be canceling the flight or getting
a new plane?) and I ordered another drink to soothe my renewed nerves. The plane
wasn’t ready until I got down to the ice in drink three, and I blame that drink
personally for what I did next.

You see, the whole time I was at the bar there was
a woman sitting next to me intently reading a book. I kept trying to strike up a
conversation, but she wasn’t having it. I don’t know if she didn’t want to talk
to me, or she was enjoying her book too much, but I couldn’t get two words out
of her.

As I sat there drinking, I started to feel pissed
off, and the focus of my pissed-offedness was this woman, sitting there all
serene and too good to talk to me, reading, reading, reading.

So,
so,
when she got up
to go to the bathroom, leaving her book sitting on the bar, I had this
uncontrollable urge to take it. I knew it was childish, I knew it was kind of
criminal, but I was having a shitty day and I wanted to spread the shit
around.

When my flight was called, the book’s owner hadn’t
returned. I gathered my stuff and threw down some money to pay for my drinks.
And then, as I walked away, I scooped up the book and shoved it in my bag, being
careful not to glance over my shoulder furtively, feeling thrilled that I’d gone
through with it.