The team doctor gave Scott a list of places. It took a week to find an open spot. Cass called the goblin and said she had mono. She stayed in her room in the basement and Scott came by every couple of days with groceries, always surprised to find her sober. One time he brought books, which caught her off guard. Scott got defensive. “You like books, remember?”
“How do you know that?”
“English class, senior year. You even liked that Jane Ear. Christ, that was painful.”
It was all she could do not to correct him on the title, Jane Eyre, but she did laugh about it after he left. Books. She’d forgotten about that. The ones he brought were mostly paperbacks with high-heeled shoes and shopping bags on the covers. But there was one called GPS Set to Joy: How to Reprogram Your Life to Locate Happiness. She didn’t read it, but she had to hand it to the author. Way to cash in on people’s joylessness.
Cass decided to move out of the dingy apartment when she went to rehab; without work she couldn’t afford the rent, pittance though it was. She stuffed her things into a sports duffel Scott had loaned her. Anything that didn’t fit in the bag got left behind. Almost everything fit in the bag.
Scott insisted on driving her to the Justin Prescott Center himself. Apparently it was named for a rich kid who didn’t make it, and his parents gave the place a load of money anyway.
“I can take a bus,” she said.
“I’ll play a lot better if I actually see you walk in and know for certain I’m off duty for the next four weeks.”
You’re not ON duty, she wanted to say. I never asked you to be! But then she remembered she’d been the one to call him. He could have told her to jump in a lake, but instead he’d come in for the save. She kept her mouth shut and focused on the landscape streaming by. Trees and hills and more trees. Connecticut. She’d never seen a place so unpeopled.
The car was becoming uncomfortably quiet. In the early years of her relationship with Ben, they’d hung out with Scotty quite a bit, laughing and shooting the breeze without a second thought. That time was clearly past.
Maybe Scott felt the weight of the silence between them, too, because he tapped the button for the radio just as a new song came on.
Cass recognized the opening chords right away. Soulful and uplifting somehow in its sadness, it was Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You.” Blue had been one of her mother’s favorite CDs, and she’d played it till the scratches became an insult to the great Goddess Joni. Then she’d gone right out and bought another one, even though they couldn’t afford it.
“I could drink a case of you, darling, and I would still be on my feet . . .”
Maybe not the most appropriate soundtrack for a trip to rehab, though, thought Cass.
Scott must have come to the same conclusion, because he thumped the power button and the car went silent again. But Cass could still hear it in her head and imagine her mom singing along and swaying to the tempo in their tiny apartment all those years ago.
* * *
AT first Cass actually liked rehab. It was the best hotel she’d ever stayed at. She figured the place was pretty high-end if so many professional athletes went there. At six foot eight, the point guard was easy to recognize. The right fielder and tight end took an extra minute or two. Without their uniforms, and with the worn-out, zombielike quality that was pretty common in the place, you had to squint a little to remember what they looked like on TV.
Cass’s room was clean and sunny. The bed was comfortable. People complained about the food, but Cass ate more than she had in years. She liked the woods outside her window, and the smell of budding things. She imagined that maybe it was like going to camp, except that the campers here were really screwed up, and there were no swim lessons.
But what she liked best about rehab was feeling safe. Even safer than she’d felt with Ben, because she had to admit, Ben was not into safety. Not even a little.
Memory is a stained and threadbare thing for a ten-year alcoholic, but she could never quite obliterate her awareness of the constant danger that had snaked through their lives. They had narrowly escaped countless dicey situations. Occasionally Ben had been beaten, she’d been groped and slapped, and they’d had their belongings and what little money they had stolen. Only six months ago they’d been sitting on a park bench on the Boston Common early one morning, shaky and hurting, working on a plan to score some breakfast booze, and a homeless guy had come at them with a broken golf club. My bench! he’d hissed, the stench of human rot spewing at them. My bench! The jagged end of the club had hit Ben’s cheek. The apostrophe-shaped scar was a constant reminder of the precariousness of their existence.
Freedom means risk, Ben would say. What Cass had only recently figured out was that for him it wasn’t a trade-off. It was win-win. He’d loved freedom and risk in equal measure, which upped the danger in their lives from merely moderate to precipitously high.
Here at the Prescott Center, Cass felt safer than she had since her mother died. After that she’d endured a series of foster parents and group home staff who ran the gamut from well-intentioned but overworked to bad-tempered and degenerate. She’d been thirteen then and she was twenty-nine now. Sixteen years of never knowing who was coming for you—or worse, knowing exactly who was coming for you. Who wouldn’t drink?
What Cass did not like about rehab was therapy and groups and all the higher power stuff. Her reaction was—Ben’s word again—ironic. It was supposed to help, but it only made her want to drink in the worst way. All these strangers talking about their feelings, like it was a good thing. It was not a good thing. Might as well dance naked through a minefield.
She was distracted from her intense aversion to therapeutic intervention, however, by her loathing for her roommate, Laurel.
Cass had been sitting on her bed, sucking on a lollipop and reading one of the paperbacks Scott had gotten her. It was about a clothing designer with a shoe-buying compulsion, a high-society boyfriend, and a cat named Manolo. This shit is hilarious, thought Cass. It was like reading about the kooky shenanigans of aliens.
The door to her room flew open and banged against the wall. Framed in the doorway like some sort of refugee from a fashion runway stood a woman wearing high leather boots, black leggings, and an impossibly soft gray sweater that swept to her thighs. Her manicured fingers gripped the handle of a monogrammed suitcase. Mahogany hair dangled into her eyes and foundered around her sharp shoulders. Mascara puddled in the hollows beneath her lower lashes.
Cass was wearing clothes she’d lifted from a Goodwill box: peach-colored jeans and a green T-shirt that said BOY SCOUTS, LIVING THE ADVENTURE.
“Hi, I’m Cass.”
The woman stared at her for a beat and said, “Laurel.”
“Do people call you Laurie?”
“No,” said Laurel. “They do not.” She let her suitcase bang to the floor, turned, and left.
Cass caught a whiff of alcohol in her wake. It was pretty common. Some folks showed up completely wasted, having swallowed every substance they could get their hands on in the hours before they stared into the abyss of sobriety. Cass was glad she’d gotten over the worst of the withdrawal symptoms before coming to the Prescott Center. She could enjoy it that much more.
* * *
IN the following days, Cass watched Laurel throw tantrums over not having a private room, at having to use Prescott toiletries (no outside containers allowed), the cleanliness of the TV room, and the lack of nutritional information for the food. She’d even thrown a piece of cornbread on the floor and hissed, “This is horrid.”
Cass had taken a bite of her own cornbread and thought, Tastes pretty damn good to me.
The one place Laurel was silent was in group. Cass was also fairly closemouthed, and it was nice to have someone else for the group to peck at to open up. In private sessions, Cass would say a little more. The guy was a professional—she figured he was paid to keep his mouth shut. But when she tried to explain that it was dangerous for people to know your business, not to mention your weaknesses, he said she had “trust issues.”
Um, yeah, she thought. Why doesn’t everyone?
One day, the group lady got down to business with Laurel. “You have four kids, right?” she said, glancing at a piece of paper in her hand. The other group members eyed one another.
“Don’t talk about my kids,” Laurel warned.
“That must be a lot of work. Does that stress you out, Laurel?”
“No, it does not stress me out,” Laurel snapped back.
Group lady looked down at the paper. “Your husband is an executive who travels extensively. That must be kind of lonely.”
Laurel rubbed at the white spots where her rings used to be. No jewelry allowed at Prescott. “No, it is not lonely,” she retorted. “He calls several times a day from wherever he is. In fact this is the only time in our entire marriage that we’ve spoken so infrequently.”
You’d need a locksmith and a stick of dynamite to get her to open up, thought Cass. It was the only thing she remotely liked about Laurel.
That afternoon, Cass went for a walk in the woods. The grounds were surrounded by a high fence so there was no worry of getting the urge to head toward civilization and liquor stores. You could urge all you wanted, you just couldn’t do anything about it. She heard something, a birdcall, she thought. Cass didn’t know the first thing about what birds sounded like in the wild, having spent her whole life in a city. It was a huh-huh-huh sound, then silence. It repeated over and over.
Cass came over the rise of a hill and saw Laurel crouched behind a big rock, arms wrapped around her shins, crying, huh-huh-huh; the silence was an intake of breath. When leaves crunched under Cass’s feet, Laurel glanced up, then buried her head farther into her knees, her arm slashing out, waving Cass away. Cass went back to the Prescott Center.
The next day was Visitors’ Day. No one came for either one of them.
* * *
ON Monday, group lady said, “So, Cass. You’re pregnant.”
Shit, here we go.
“How far along are you?”
“A couple of months, I think.”
“You think?” said Laurel suddenly. “You don’t know?”
“I can’t afford a doctor.”
“You’re at the Justin Prescott Center! How in the world did you get in here if you can’t afford a doctor?”
“A friend helped me out.” Cass glanced around the room. All eyes on her, like ghouls from a nightmare.
Laurel continued her barrage. “A friend who spent thousands of dollars on rehab and didn’t even send you for a pregnancy checkup? That’s utterly ridiculous.”
“Okay, that’s enough, now,” said group lady.
Laurel ignored her. “Not to mention there are free clinics and government programs. How could you be so irresponsible?”
Cass stood up. “I’m sorry if I spent too much time trying not to poison my baby with alcohol to go score some pregnancy vitamins. At least I’m quitting now, before he’s born. By the way,” she said, “how screwed up are your kids?”
* * *
CASS went out to a little pond on the grounds and threw every stone, stick, and hunk of moss she could find into the water. “Oh, I’m irresponsible,” she muttered. “Well, I’m not the one who left four kids crying for their mama so I could go dry out for a month . . .”
What she wouldn’t have done for a bottle of something. She couldn’t make herself stop scanning the area, hoping maybe someone had a stash out here. Under this rock? No? Then into the water you go, you useless hunk of mineral, and she’d hurl it into the pond.
She had to admit she wasn’t just angry at Laurel; she was also mad at herself for taking a potshot at Laurel’s kids. It wasn’t their fault—Cass knew that all too well. And Laurel had a point about not finding a clinic. It had occurred to Cass, but she was afraid the doctor would somehow know she was a drunk and . . . she didn’t know what could happen. But what people didn’t know, they couldn’t use against you. She’d learned that from Ben.
Ben, who was now resting peacefully in the Market Street Cemetery. She missed him so much, and yet she was mad at him, too. Look at this mess! she wanted to tell him. What am I going to do now? How am I going to keep this up for eighteen years? Maybe Scotty was right.
By the time she came back it was dinnertime, and her stomach gurgled for food. Hungry little person, she told the baby. You must have your uncle’s appetite.
She got her tray and sat down at an empty table but was soon joined by a guy from the therapy group, Tate Hogarth. Cass had recognized him right away. He’d been with half the major-league ball clubs in the country, and now played third base for the New York Yankees.
“Mind if I join you?” His travels had sanded the edges off his southern accent, but it was still softly noticeable.
“Not at all.”
“Man, you took her down a peg,” he said, chuckling conspiratorially. “It was all I could do to keep from applauding.”
Cass frowned. “She’s a piece of work, but I shouldn’t have gone after her kids.”
“In my experience—which is extensive,” said Tate, “there’s different kinds of drunks. We all hate ourselves for drinking. But she’s the kind that also happens to think she’s smarter than everyone else. They tend to be a mite intractable.”
“My boyfriend was like that.” As soon as it was out of her mouth, she couldn’t believe it. Cass hadn’t said a word about Ben since she’d been at Prescott, except briefly in private therapy.
“Is he your baby’s daddy?”
“Yeah. Was. He died a couple of months ago.”
Tate shook his head. “Sometimes life is just too cruel. How’d he go?”
“Alcohol poisoning.”
His smile was knowing and sad. “Cassie-girl, you got your work cut out for you.”
* * *
WHEN Cass went up to her room after dinner, Laurel had moved out. Cass didn’t know if she’d left the program entirely, or simply transferred to another unit. She was glad for the peace and quiet, but a little part of her worried that she had pushed Laurel over the edge.
The next morning, the therapist told her, “It’s almost the end of week three, Cass. Who would you like to invite here to talk with you about your sobriety?”
“I don’t have anyone.” The guy knew she was a foster kid, that her friends were partiers, and that Ben was dead. Why was he asking?
“You make phone calls occasionally. Who do you call?”
“My friend Kate. But half the time she’s bombed.”
“Is this a close friend?”
“Sort of, I guess.” Several years ago Kate had dated a buddy of Ben’s, and they’d had some wild times together. Then the guy went to jail for cashing stolen checks, and Kate had nowhere to go. Cass had taken her in. She had sporadic work as a dog groomer, depending on how hungover she was when she woke up.
“Will you be able to continue this friendship and still stay sober?”
Cass thought about it. “Not likely.”
“I see. What about Mr. McGreavy? I understand he paid for your stay here.”
“He’s got a series in Seattle next week. But even if he didn’t, he wouldn’t come. We’re not really friends. He’s the baby’s uncle and he wanted to get me off on the right foot with the pregnancy, and all. But honestly, I can’t ask him for one more thing.”
The therapist furrowed his brow. “Cass, you’ve done very well here, but if you have no support when you leave, I’m worried you’ll be right back where you started.”
That night she called Kate, who happened to be only a drink or two in, and explained about the visit. “Do you think you could make it?”
“I can’t afford the bus ticket—I’m barely scraping the rent together as it is.”
“Shit,” said Cass. “I’m supposed to get someone to come and be . . .”
“Be what?”
“I don’t know. Like supportive.”
“Of not drinking?”
Cass sighed. “Yeah.”
Kate chuckled. “Um, do they have to do it with a straight face?”
Cass laughed. “Shut up, this is serious! I’m in fucking rehab!”
“I know, I know!” Kate said, still giggling. “It’s just—”
It’s just there’s no one, thought Cass, and it brought her up short. This was not funny. And it was going to be really not funny when she got out.
Where would she go? How would she live? Clearly working in a bar was a bad idea, but the tips weren’t nearly as good at places that didn’t serve liquor. She had no real skills, no home, no money, no sober friends. All she had was an addiction that ran her every waking moment.
* * *
CASS and Tate started hanging out a little bit, taking walks and watching TV at night together in the common room. Tate was a fan of Extreme Couponing. He admired the organization and determination it involved. “My mama’s like that. Sixty-two years old and never paid full price for a single thing in her life.”
Cass was more fascinated by the quantities. What would anyone actually do with twenty-two bottles of laundry detergent, once the cameras stopped rolling?
“So,” Tate said one night after the show was over, and they were still sitting there on the couch. “Looking forward to busting out of here?”
She looked at him, uncertain how to answer. He just smiled that slow, sad smile of his and said, “Me neither.”
“How come?”
“Oh, you know. This is hard and all, but at least you’re surrounded by people who get it, who won’t say, ‘Ah, come on, just a coupla beers—you’ll be fine.’”
The ever-present ache of fear swelled in Cass’s chest. She found herself telling him how she had nothing to go back to, and she couldn’t ask the baby’s uncle for one more favor.
“Whoever he is, you being sober must’ve meant something to him, or he wouldn’t have sent you down here at considerable personal expense. He’s got an investment in you now. Call him and see what you can work out. Think about what you can offer, and see if he’ll make a deal. Heck, offer him a discount!” He smiled at her. “Everybody likes a bargain, Cass.”
* * *
CASS kept up on Scott’s series in Seattle. He played reasonably well, got some base hits, and in the last game, reached into the stands to catch a foul in the ninth for the win. She called the next morning.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded.
“Nothing.”
“You okay? Still playing by the rules?”
“Totally. Nice game, by the way. That was a great catch.”
“Oh . . . thanks.” He exhaled. “I almost didn’t even go for it. It was over the stands and then the wind blew it in. Had to run like hell.” They chatted about how lucky it was, and how all the guys thumped him black and blue when he got back to the dugout.
“So,” he said. “How do you feel?”
“Squeaky clean. And hungry all the time. And a little bit . . . worried.” She told him she didn’t think she could go back to her friends in Brighton, couldn’t trust herself to work in a bar.
“Where’s this going, Cass?”
“What if I stayed with you?”
“Jesus!”
“I could clean your house, do your shopping, run any errand you want—for free! Just give me a place to stay where I can figure out what to do next. I’m offering you a bargain, Scotty. Please. Just give me a month.”