Highland Blessings (44 page)

I punched in Molly’s number.

One ring. “You up?” she said.

“Meet you there in fifteen.” I hung up knowing Molly would understand that fifteen meant twenty. I yanked on clean shorts and a sports bra, but kept the leftover T-shirt from yesterday. Yesterday. Apple juice. Was today the day I would practice not drinking? Did I pay for groceries? No bags on the kitchen counter. A half bagel waited on a plate.

I passed on breakfast and grabbed my keys from the top of the washing machine. Carl really needed to hang a key rack. I locked the leaded glass doors, unlocked the wrought-iron gate, and walked through a gauntlet of Tudor and French provincial houses. Molly and I always met at the cul-de-sac entrance to the trails at the end of my street.

Molly was in her ready zone. She alternated long, bouncing genuflects to stretch her legs.

“I’m always amazed that your calves are almost as long as my legs,” I said and slid the fuzzy banana-yellow headband hanging around my neck to around my head to tame my disobedient hair.

“Save that for one of your hyperbole lessons.” A tint of anger edged her words.

“Hey, Moll, I’m sorry. Carl forgot to wake me up when he left for golf this morning.”

“It’s his fault you’re late?” I knew tone, and her tone definitely indicated she thought exactly the opposite. “Did he wake you up for school too?”

Sarcasm lesson. “Sometimes,” I said.

She smiled.

I moved close to forgiveness. “Okay, almost always.”

A laugh.

Suffering over.

“Let’s get started before the sun sucks the life out of us,” she said.

Only a silo-sized vacuum cleaner hose could suck the energy out of Molly. Twenty years younger and she’d be on meds for hyperactivity. Instead, she’s on meds for infertility. She and Devin had been baby practicing for almost two years. Practice had not made perfect. Over a year ago, when I told her I was pregnant, I almost wanted to apologize. Carl and I hadn’t planned to be parents. But we were. For six weeks. Then Alyssa died. I stopped feeling guilty around Molly. Mostly I stopped feeling.

I bent over, pretended to adjust my shoelace, and hoped Molly didn’t see the grief floating in my eyes.

“I’m ready.” I popped up. Perky trumps pity. “And wait till you hear what happened.”

When I chronicled the latest school dramas, my body didn’t feel so heavy as I pounded my way down the path. A paralegal for trial attorneys, Molly didn’t share many details about work. We entertained ourselves some days imagining which kids in detention would become lawyers and which ones would need lawyers.

“So, get this, I’m handing out tests, and—”

Her power walk shifted down two gears. She held up her hand and said, “No, Leah. Stop.” American manicure this week, I noticed.

I looked over my shoulders thinking some school person had materialized behind us and Molly had just rescued me from embarrassment and possible unemployment. No one.

“Safe. Trail clear of suspects.” I rattled on.

Another shift down. We now strolled.

“I have to talk to you about something, and it has to be today.” She tucked her shoulder-length cinnamon-shaded hair behind her ears, a habit I’d learned meant she was ready for serious.

I sidestepped a clump of strange goo. “What’s up?”

Molly pointed to a bench where the path split to lead to the pool or school. That always struck me as an unfair choice for kids on their way to school in the mornings.

She sat. Scary news was sit-down talk. I paced.

“You drink too much.”

My feet stopped, but my soul lurched. My ship of composure pitched suddenly on this wave of information. I willed myself to calmness, “Who are you, Molly? AA’s new spokeswoman?” The ten-year-old inside of me rose to the surface. “Oops, gender bias. New spokesperson?”

“I’m serious. No more jokes. I’ve been praying about this for weeks, not knowing how to say this to you. After last night, I knew it couldn’t wait.”

“Oh, so God told you to talk to me. Got it.” I scattered pine-cones with the tip of my Nikes.

“I don’t think you get it,” Molly said. “God hasn’t text messaged me about you.” Her cool hand wrapped itself around my wrist. “Would you sit down, please?”

I wanted to walk away—run, really—but her words anchored my heart. I couldn’t move. I waited. I waited to breathe again. Waited for the tornado of emotions to stop swirling in my chest. I sat.

“Yesterday, Carrie called to see if you’d made it home. She wanted to drive you, but you absolutely refused. When she asked about whether to call Carl to pick you up, you told her … well, that’s not worth repeating.”

“So I had a few too many. It was a party. People drank. I drank. I’ll apologize to Carrie for whatever I said.”

“You don’t remember, do you? Do you remember that night we went to Rizzo’s for the company dinner?” She paused while two tricycling kids and a set of parents meandered past us.

If my brain had a file cabinet of events, the drawers were stuck. Dinner at Rizzo’s. Retirement. Somebody retired. I tugged at the memory and tried to coax it out.

“Of course I remember. That guy, what was his name? He retired.” I leaned back and wished the wrought-iron bench slats were padded.

“And?” Not really a question.

“And, what? Since you already know the answer.”

“Leah,” she said and leaned toward me. I still couldn’t look at her. “Dinner was late. You grabbed the wine bottle from the waiter, gave him your wine glass, and then told him you two were even. You said if we’d pound our silverware on the table, we’d be served faster. You almost dropped a full bowl of gumbo in your lap. You said it looked like something you’d thrown up the night before.”

I wanted a button to zap a force field around me. I wanted silence. A piece of me had broken, and Molly had found it. If I talked too much, other pieces might shatter. I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk turning inside out.

“You were out of control,” she said, the words filed by her softness so the edges were smooth when they pushed into me.

Yes, and out of control was exactly what I’d planned.

I couldn’t look at Molly yet. I couldn’t admit to my best friend in the universe that Carl told me almost every night something was terribly wrong with me. I thought I’d managed to divide myself quite nicely: Leah in the bedroom and Leah outside of the bedroom.

“I want to disappear,” I said to the grass blades mashed under my shoes.

“You are disappearing. That’s the problem. You’re my friend. I want you here.” She slid next to me and placed her hand on my shoulder. “In the two years we’ve known each other, your drinking has gotten worse. I know you suffered after losing Alyssa. I know you still do. But you need help, or something awful is going to happen.”

I wanted to hate her. But how could I hate a friend who loved me enough to save my life?

“I lost my sanity at the apple juice case,” I repeated to Dolores, the intake clerk who scribbled information onto whatever form they used to admit the inebriated. She placed her pencil on the glass-topped desk, clasped her hands over the clipboard, and peered at me over her reading glasses.

“Were you buying it to mix drinks?” she asked quietly, as if afraid the question would hurt me.

I’m being admitted into rehab by a woman who clearly failed to understand that apple juice mixed with few, if any, hard liquors. My galloping knees knew
that
was something to be jittery about. Hadn’t I explained the twelve-pack of beer in the grocery cart? Why would I be worried about mixing? Did rehab centers hire teetotalers so they’d never have to worry about employee discounts for services?

“Noooo. It just seemed too overwhelming to decide which brand to buy. You know, the whole cost per ounce thing.”

No doubt Dolores knew I was ready for admission after that, but she persisted. She asked who referred me.

“This was all my friend Molly’s idea. She even made the appointment for me. This morning after our walk. Before my husband’s golf game ended.” Good grief. My inner child needed a nap.

This information about Molly seemed both unsurprising and amusing to Dolores. “Yes, it often works that way. People see in us what we can’t see in ourselves. Don’t need mirrors here.”

Thirty minutes later, Dolores and I agreed I would voluntarily admit myself the morning of July 4.

Leah Adair Thornton. Age 27. Middle-stage alcoholic.