Starting Over (Treading Water Trilogy) (6 page)

“That’s all right. All we can do is offer help. It’s far more important that you ask for it.”

“The people here are getting me to say and do all kinds of things I never imagined I’d say or do.”

Alan chuckled. “They find a way to crack even the toughest nuts.”

Brandon laughed. “Bad pun.”

“Feels good, doesn’t it? To unload that heavy stuff?”

“Yeah, but some of it’s pretty bad.”

“I imagine it is, or you wouldn’t be here.”

At the three-mile mark, Brandon slowed to a walk and wiped the sweat from his brow. His heavy breathing left a cloud in the frosty air.

Alan fell in beside him.

“I’ve told Sondra some stuff that no one—and I mean
no one
—knows about me,” Brandon said.

“She has a way of getting people to talk. She’s famous for that around here.”

“Let me guess: she gets the toughest nuts?”

“You got it.”

“I can see why.”

“What made you want to call me, Brandon?”

“I’ve been reading a lot about AA. I’m surprised by how interesting the
Big Book
is.”

“The one thing I still remember from the first time I read it is the analogy about alcoholics who think they can go back to drinking. The book says it’s like someone who loses their legs thinking they’re going to grow back. I’ve never forgotten that. It’s compelling stuff, isn’t it?”

“It sure is, and with millions of people saying it saved their lives, it’s pretty clear it works, too.”

“It only works for those of us who commit ourselves to it completely. I’ve seen a lot of people with good intentions go back to their old lives because they had some misguided idea that they were different from the rest of us or they could somehow control it. They thought their legs would grow back.”

“I don’t want to be one of the failures,” Brandon said. “I’ve had enough of that. I want to do this right.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that. You’ve come a long way from the day we first met.”

“I know a lot more now about how I hurt my family and other people in my life. I can’t do that anymore.”

Alan stopped walking and turned to him. “That’s very admirable, Brandon, and you’re well on your way to achieving steps eight and nine by realizing it. But you can’t do this for your family. You have to do it for you. First and foremost, it has to be for you.”

“I want to stay sober for me, too. I do. I can’t believe what I’ve let happen to my body. I was an All-American swimmer at Notre Dame. Back then, I ran ten miles a day without breaking a sweat. Now, I’m almost dead after three.”

“You’re getting old,” Alan chuckled. “It happens to the best of us.”

“I’m thirty-eight years old, Alan, and I have almost nothing to show for it but a beer belly and a bad liver.”

“You’re on the right path. I think you’re doing great. You look a lot better, too. I almost didn’t recognize you without the shiners and the busted-up face. What matters most, though, is your attitude has improved dramatically.”

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to stick to the program when I get out of here,” Brandon confessed.

“Why?”

Brandon kicked at a grungy pile of old snow. “All the God stuff is a problem for me. A big problem.”

“How come?”

“I don’t have a good track record with God.”

“He’s let you down?”

“I guess you could say that. My parents are as Irish-Catholic as it gets, and we were force-fed religion as kids: Catholic school, altar service, sacraments, the whole nine yards. I haven’t set foot inside a church since I was old enough to decide for myself.”

“AA doesn’t expect you to go back to the church. The program only suggests you open yourself up to the
idea
of a higher power, something greater than yourself. For some in the Fellowship, that higher power is AA itself. You have to find your own higher power and give over control of your life, because you’ve found when you try to go it alone, it doesn’t work.”

“Were you like me? Did you find all this talk of spirituality to be off-putting?”

“At first. But like many of the people you’ll meet through the Fellowship, I’ve found all kinds of reasons to believe. I’ve seen it work. For me, God is the person running my show now, and I know He’s got my back. It’s one less thing for me to worry about every day.”

“Did you have one of those ‘ah-ha’ moments people talk about when you were able to embrace this spirituality stuff?”

“I did. When my son was six, he had meningitis and almost died. My ex-wife called my mother to tell her she needed to come to the hospital right away. I’d been sober about three years then, and when my mother called to tell me, my first impulse was to find a bar. But instead, I dropped to my knees and asked God to save my child. Since I wouldn’t have been welcome at the hospital, it was the only thing I could do. I prayed for hours, all night, in fact. The next morning, my mother called to say his fever had broken, and he was expected to survive. I guess you could say I never questioned God’s existence again.”

“That’s amazing.”

“It’s really quite simple. I had a choice that night: find a bottle or put God in charge. There have been many other times since then when I’ve had the same choice, and I’ve never regretted choosing God over alcohol.”

Brandon glanced up at the gray sky where puffy white clouds signaled the probability of snow. “I used to pray to God that my brother would die.”

“I take it He didn’t answer you?”

“No. Instead He took my brother’s wife, the girl we both loved. Until I came here, no one has ever known that I loved her, too.”

“So you blame yourself. You think because you prayed for your brother to die that God played some sort of dirty trick on you?”

“Something like that.”

“God doesn’t work that way. If He did, why would He allow murderers and rapists to continue walking the earth? Why wouldn’t He punish them if He were going to punish you like that?”

Brandon thought about that. He didn’t want to admit it made sense. If he did, he’d have to let go of some of the things he had believed for most of his life.

“Do you still want your brother to die?”

After a long moment of silence, Brandon said, “No.”

When they reached the end of the trail, they sat on a bench that overlooked the ocean.

“If your brother had died when you asked God to take him, how do you think you would’ve felt?”

“I don’t know. I’ve hated him for so long I don’t remember what it’s like
not
to hate him.”

“I’m wondering if maybe you really hated yourself, and he was just convenient.”

Startled, Brandon looked at him. “Why do you say that?”

“What did he do to make you hate him?”

“I met her first.” Brandon drifted a million miles away as he remembered that fateful day. “Aidan and I were inseparable back then. We were playing football on the beach. I dove for the ball and landed face-first in the sand right at her feet. I looked up, and it was like a punch to the gut. I was eleven years old and still thought girls were gross, but in that moment, it was like all the mysteries of the universe had been solved, and I finally got what the hoopla was about. I didn’t recognize it then for what it was, but as the years passed and the feelings I had for her became more intense, I came to understand what happened to me that day on the beach.”

Alan stayed quiet and let Brandon talk.

“She laughed because I had sand all over my face, and then she bent down to pick up the football. I must’ve looked like an idiot because I just froze. She handed me the towel she had around her neck, and I stood up to use it to brush the sand off my face. She said her name was Sarah Sweeny. I think I probably told her my name, but I don’t really remember what I said. Even at twelve, she was gorgeous, with long dark hair and these soft brown eyes that always twinkled like she’d just heard a good joke. I talked to her for a few minutes before Aidan came to find me. She took one look at him, and she never saw me again. I just disappeared. That night was the first of many nights I asked God to make Aidan go away.”

“Did you think she’d turn to you if he was gone?”

“I looked just like him back then. I guess I still do in a lot of ways. People used to ask our mother if we were twins when we were younger, so I never got what was so special about him that she just stopped seeing me when he came along.”

“Isn’t that one of life’s great mysteries? Why are we attracted to one person but not another? Brandon,
she
chose him. That wasn’t his fault. And it probably wasn’t just because of the way he looked.”

“If he hadn’t been there, maybe she would’ve chosen me. Maybe my whole life would’ve turned out differently.”

“You still would’ve lost her,” Alan reminded him.

“But at least I would’ve
had
her. She’s the only girl I’ve ever loved. How pathetic is that? I had her for ten minutes before he showed up and ruined everything. Then I had to spend the next sixteen years watching them be madly in love. Every summer, she would come back to Chatham, and they’d pick right up again. They went to college together, got married, got pregnant. He got to have
everything
with her. I just got to wear a tuxedo in their wedding and had to act like I gave a fuck.”

“He also had to lose her. How did you feel when that happened?”

“Like the world had ended,” Brandon said simply. “It was fast. She was dead six months after she was diagnosed. By then she couldn’t even stand me. I was a jerk to both of them because I loved her so much that I didn’t know how else to handle it. For years that’s how I coped with it, but while I was busy nurturing my feelings for her, I failed to have a genuine relationship with anyone else. After she died, something in me shut down. It was like I couldn’t go through that kind of ordeal again.”

“You’ve missed out on a lot. There’s nothing like being in love with someone who loves you back.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Brandon said. “I realize now I always drank too much, but the day she died was the first time I cried as an adult. It was also the first time I drank enough to black out. I woke up the next day in some girl’s bed and had no idea who she was or how I’d gotten there.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“It wasn’t my loss. It was Aidan’s.”

“It was yours, too.”

Brandon turned to him. “Thank you. Thank you for getting that. My mother has never forgiven me for not going to Sarah’s funeral. She was furious. Aidan didn’t go either, but everyone understood that. I just came off looking like an unfeeling asshole.”

“But you weren’t unfeeling; you were devastated. You know that. That’s what has to matter here, not what anyone else thought. They couldn’t have known what losing her meant to you.”

“I couldn’t very well admit to being in love with my brother’s wife.”

“Not then, maybe, but now might be a good time.”

“I’m going to have to tell him all this, aren’t I?” Brandon asked with a wary glance at Alan.

“Your feelings toward him have been a cancer in your life, and you’ve used alcohol as medicine. If you want to stop drinking, really stop, you have to get out from under all this negativity and resentment. It’s smothering you.”

“I can’t imagine telling him this without a fifth of whiskey and a six pack in my belly.”

“Ask God to show you the way. You don’t need the booze. When the time is right to tell Aidan, you’ll know. For now, don’t worry about it. Worry about getting through today.”

“One day at a time,” Brandon said, repeating a basic tenet of the AA philosophy.

“That’s right.”

“Thank you,” Brandon said, reaching out to shake Alan’s hand.

“Glad I could help. Race you back?”

Brandon laughed. “Only if you give me a serious head start.”

Chapter 6, Day 21

Colin downshifted to ease his big Harley into a space at the far end of the Congregational Church parking lot. When he cut the engine, the bike let out one last gasp before it went quiet.

He’d taken his mother’s concerns about airing the family’s laundry in public to heart when he decided to take the bike on a rare midwinter outing. No sense advertising his connection to O’Malley & Sons by driving the company truck.

The motorcycle was one of the few secrets he kept from his mother, who’d have a stroke if she knew her two youngest sons owned Harleys and—even at thirty-five and thirty-six—went to great lengths to keep them hidden from her.

Taking off his helmet, Colin watched the clusters of people moving toward the door that led to the church hall in the basement. The group seemed to be well acquainted, and he wondered how they’d feel about a newcomer.

Before he could lose his nerve, he tucked the helmet under his arm and crossed the parking lot.

Inside he stuffed his gloves in the pockets of his brown leather coat and stashed the helmet on a table in the back of the room. Colin was relieved when he didn’t recognize any of the dozen or so people who were helping themselves to coffee and brownies. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized how concerned he was about running into someone he knew. A middle-aged man with a comb-over and a friendly smile approached him.