Red’s saved me a seat at group. He’s got a cup of coffee on the floor by his feet, and a couple of cheese Danishes in his hands. “Want one?” he offers.
My stomach growls, even though I just ate breakfast, and I take it gratefully. “Thanks,” I say, scattering crumbs.
The other guys settle into their seats, and Howard starts the session.
“Because several of you will be leaving in the next few days,” Howard begins, “I thought it would be valuable to spend this session talking about some of the concerns you might have about going home.”
Red elbows me in the ribs. “Lucky I’m not one of you,” he whispers. “I’m in for another thirty days.”
I lick the remnants of cheese filling from my thumb. “The insurance thing got worked out?” Lisa’s mom had been working on getting Red an extension for a while, and Red, not at all ready to go back home, had been anxiously waiting for this news.
“Yep. I’m approved for the extended program, and then probably sober living or a half-way house or something.”
“Nice.”
All around the circle, people offer to share. One by one, fears are named in the safety of this space we’ve all come to trust.
“Falling back into old habits.”
“The stress of going back to school.”
“Having to find new friends.”
My own fears echo those of the group, and I find myself nodding in agreement, in understanding. When Howard asks the group how they plan on coping with these challenges, I raise my hand.
“Eli,” Howard says. “Do you have something you want to share?”
“I, uh, I go home in four days. And I’m not sure I’m ready.”
Howard nods encouragingly.
“It’s like there’s this big hole inside me, and nothing fills it. I know that’s why I used, because I was trying to fill that hole. But now that I’m not using, the hole feels bigger. It feels more empty.”
My throat constricts; I force myself to keep talking, even though my words tremble. “You guys all believe in something, but I don’t have that. What’s going to keep me from falling back in?”
An image of Libby flashes through my mind—alone in her bathroom, a razor pressed against her wrist. Certain there was no other way.
I drop my head into my hands; words pour through my fingers like water. “I want to get better. But I can’t do it on my own. I need help, okay? I need help.”
Howard’s voice tugs me out of hiding. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past ten years, Eli, it’s that when you ask for help, it always comes.”
I press my palms against my eyes and wipe the telltale wetness onto my jeans. “It just feels so fucking hard.”
Howard nods. “I know it does. But you’re not alone, Eli. Look around this circle, look at the people in your corner. Individually, we are all vulnerable to the pull of our addictions. But as a group, we are greater. You don’t have to do this alone, Eli. The strength and spirit of this group will be with you every step of the way.”
I dare to peer around the circle, to meet the gazes of the guys in my group. Some of them haggard, some of them broken. All of them with scars like mine.
A heavy hand drops on my shoulder, and I turn to meet Red’s eyes. In them I see the night Will left. Red in my room, both of us weak, both of us hungry for what Will had. But together we were more. Together we made it through.
“Thanks,” I whisper.
Red grins at me. “What are friends for?”
I sit cross-legged on the floor in front of my higher power canvas and page lazily through my pile of magazines. The art teacher had them ready for me when I got to class, along with a pair of scissors and a bottle of glue. “Collage is a wonderfully intuitive art form,” she’d said, handing over the stack of supplies. “Sometimes you don’t even know what you’re looking for until you find it.”
I sip coffee from my lukewarm cup and eye my canvas skeptically. The picture of the kayaker stares back at me. It’s hung there in isolation for the last week. The impossibility of the kayaker’s task first drew me to the image—the cliff of sheer rock rising up right in front of him. But it’s the water that I notice now, the crystal-clear expanse surrounding the kayaker, holding him up.
I remember something I learned forever ago in Earth Science. Water erodes rock. That mountain face might look impassable, but there are cracks in its seemingly solid surface—narrow spaces where water can get in. Water is powerful. With enough time, water can take down a mountain.
I turn back to the magazine in my lap and examine the pages with sharpened focus. The guys in group talk about their higher powers like they’re always available—as handy and accessible as a pack of Kleenex or a tube of ChapStick, right there in your pocket whenever you need them. Not me. I don’t believe in some ethereal superpower that can swoop in and rescue me when I’m in trouble. But I believe in my friends. I believe in Red, in the unimaginable courage he has to face down his demons even as he grieves the death of his girlfriend. I believe in Libby, in the quiet strength she finds in her paintings and in her journal, despite her fucked-up family. And I believe in Mo, in falling down and getting back up, over and over again.
I take apart the magazine with frenzied scissors. Within the blaring headlines, I find the words I need. I cut letters from lies, piecing new words together. Page after page, I fill with jagged cracks, until the words spill out like light into darkness, pathways through the mountain.
STRENGTH
COURAGE
HOPE
FORGIVENESS
With dots of glue and fragments of tape, I tell the kayaker the real story. There are cracks in the mountain, I tell him. There are places where you can get through. You may not see them yet. You may not see them for a while.
I fill the sky with words that guide his way like stars.
The lobby’s empty after dinner, the Front Desk Fascist gone for the day. I lean over the desk and scoot the phone closer. I lift the receiver, my fingers hovering over the keypad.
You were right.
I need help.
I’m sorry.
Words are insufficient. There’s nothing I can say to take back what I’ve done to my mom, nothing I can say that will change our family’s story. The past is already written. My dad died an addict. I’m an addict, too. Nothing I can say will make any of that better.
In the back of my mind, I hear Richard Fisher’s voice from so many weeks ago. “That’s why we start at the beginning, kid.”
And so I do.
I start from where I am.
My fingers crisscross the keypad, dialing the number I know by heart.
“Eli?” she says, before I can say anything at all. “Eli, is that you?”
“Hi, Mom,” I say. And then: “Yeah. It’s good to hear your voice, too.”