Brian came home from the hospital that Saturday, and moped guiltily around the house for the next few days. He was sufficiently detoxed that he didn’t seem hostile or anxious, and in this quiet interlude, we talked about rehab again.
“After Christmas. Right after Christmas,” he said. “I’ll go. I promise.”
“You’ll go, all right,” David said. “You’re not coming back here otherwise.”
Brian didn’t answer with a “fuck you, who do you think you are,” which left me hopeful. David had researched local rehab programs and for this second round, suggested we try BridgeWaters, an outpatient program that would allow Brian to live at home while, at the same time, occupying virtually every minute of every one of his days with counselors, fellow rehabbers, and activities. “We surround our clients with love, new friends, and new hope,” the cloudsite explained. Mom and Brian set up an informational appointment for the week after Christmas, and since I’d be home until just after New Years, I would go, too.
Right now, though, I was still determined to get Brian out of the house.
“I heard Too Too Twain’s has scale models of the streetcars delivering food,” I told Brian.
“Wouldn’t know. Last time I was there was when, what—when I was twelve?”
“Same here. I’m hungry. Wanna go?”
Brian looked at me. He was lying prostrate across his bed. I stood at his door.
“Too kidsy,” Brian said.
“Food’s good. And I hear the trains have gotten amazingly elaborate.”
“Weren’t they always?”
“I don’t remember a 3D-projected ghost train or the Polar Express.”
Brian just lay there, looking at me. Then he did the unthinkable: He raised his hand and languidly flipped me off. I knew he wanted me to go away, so this dismissive behavior was no surprise. Nonetheless, a storm of tears started brewing off my coastline, and I stood in his doorway fuming. I walked in, slapped his hand away and seized his throat.
“If you ever do that to me again, I’ll kill you myself!” As quickly as I had landed on him, I retreated. He looked at me in shock.
“I’m down with Too Too Twain’s.” He sprang out of bed and hugged me. He took my hair in his hand and kissed my head. Tears rolled down my cheeks and dripped on his hands. I hugged him back, limply at first, then powerfully. The storm subsided.
On Christmas Day, we opened presents and sang vintage rock songs, stuff our grandparents and their parents listened to. Mom told the Cloud to “play Daniel” and the house filled with the first chords by a British singer I’d heard a couple times, Elton John. David apparently knew the song and touched mom while looking at Brian, sitting on the couch with a half-unwrapped package. “Stop Daniel,” mom said.
“Sounded like a good song,” Brian said.
“I need me some Stevie,” mom said, calling up songs by a female singer, Stevie Nicks. I had heard of her, even listened to her a few times. It was so hard to find good music, much harder than when mom was young. Everything now is just a big jumble. If you don’t follow the music cloud logs or the rockers who still tour, you’re stuck sifting through every band or solo artist who posts a song in the Cloud. Mom insisted on using the cloudcam subscription I bought her to snap some 3D captures of the three of us, next to the tree, together on the floor, in front of the fire.
“Closer, closer. Smile. David—smile.”
“David’s not smiling, mom,” Brian chuckled.
She looked at us and blinked. Look-and-blink. Photo captured to The Cloud.
“David stole Brian’s present, mom,” I said, leaning over and kissing David and mussing his hair, moves mom immortalized then projected back. I’m blown away how 3D pix and videos get so much more detailed and lifelike every year, even without more megapixels. MarsMicro took a bunch of these cameras to the planet and when we first found Crimsy, it was like she was already home. “Holy bloody hell,” I remember Dr. Marcum saying, when the first images and videos started coming in.
“Those may be the most beautiful photographs I’ve ever seen, next to Malachi’s baby pix,” Dr. Shonstein added.
And this might have been the most beautiful Christmas I’ve ever had. It was wonderful, the entire day, from mom’s first steps downstairs to make breakfast to her last steps upstairs that night, leaving the three of us to talk and laugh and tell each other how much we loved each other without once saying the word “love.” It was moments like these that made our troubles seem illusory, a troubling phenomenon itself since we all went to bed in the wee hours of December 26 with our guards down.
We went to BridgeWaters the Wednesday following and Brian signed up, with mom writing a hefty check. Insurance didn’t cover “outpatient” rehab, though everything we had heard indicated this was far more intense than inpatient rehab. Mom and David seemed relieved. I was skeptical but hopeful. Brian said he was excited and acted the part.
Two guys showed up at our door early the next morning.
“Brian here?” the one with a tattoo on his neck asked.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I’m Jim.”
“Rick, ma’am.”
“BridgeWaters?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jim opened his hand to a ghostcard. I bent down and read the apparition hovering in his palm. “James Palmer, Certified Addiction Counselor, BridgeWaters of Kenosha, blah blah blah.”
“You think we were drug dealers?” Rick asked.
I hesitated.
“If you did, that’s cool. I used to be. Only way I could feed the monkey.”
“To be honest—”
“It’s all right. Happens all the time. Are you Jennifer?”
“As a matter of fact. Call me Jen.” I let them in.
“Brian.” I called up to his room. Rick intervened.
“We’ll go on up, if that’s okay.”
I stepped aside. I heard them knock on his door and Brian answer. They came downstairs, Jim in front, Rick behind, and Brian in between.
“Goin’ out,” he said.
The hairs didn’t stand on the back of my neck like they did when his addict friends came around, so I figured everything was cool. I grabbed Brian and hugged him. “Be safe. Have fun. Love you.”
Rick, Jim, and some other counselors who didn’t look like counselors were back and forth from the house with Brian every day until I left. I could feel the stress draining from mom. David still had some of his guards up, but said he thought everything might finally be okay.
“They have a great success rate,” he said, almost bragging. “Relapses are really rare.”
I felt comfortable returning to my calling for the first time in years.