Lucille emerges from the operating room on a gurney, her brain snowed with anesthesia, breasts neatly stitched in matching crescent moons about the nipples and wrapped in Ace bandages. Hours later, when she finally rouses herself, she begins to cry, softly and carefully so as not to draw too deep a breath. I pet her head as she whimpers like a wounded pup. Tears seep from the taut corners of her eyes.
Forty-eight hours later, the bandages are removed so that she can view her new physique before a full-length mirror in our bedroom and inspect the trail of coarse black sutures. In her misery I witness a thrilling smile. She can’t stop looking at herself, the feminine exaggeration of her outline. All she wants now as she draws the bandages back over herself is to be healed. But for now the pain is quite real.
In spite of all, I have come with my agenda. As she lay in bed I prepare to bring up the subject of rehab, a subject which has possessed me since the arrest. My line of reasoning is simple and practical. An incarcerated fiancée is not in the offing. Therefore she must do whatever is necessary to keep that from happening. Therefore she must get into a rehab program before she sets foot in a courtroom. Curry favor with the judge for all she is worth, demonstrate that she is well, at least well enough to understand she has a problem. She must keep her promise and do whatever I ask.
The unhandy timing of the proposition is gilded with a discovery, for I know of a less disruptive way of going about the whole process. In the newspaper I happened across an ad for an extended outpatient rehab program at a local hospital. I called for the brochure, which sells the program as something like going to a job for eight hours a day, whereupon you return home in the evening. Lucille appears to consider this for a moment. Then she refuses, the grounds an unintelligible mutter. But it’s the only strategy that might keep her out of the pokey and keep us together, and she knows it. I can see the wheels whirring in her head at impossible speeds before delivering her to the obvious conclusion.
The sessions begin a few days after she enrolls. There are a dozen other people from all walks of life in the class with some sort of drug dependency. In the beginning Lucille complains about the personal nature of the questions put to her by the therapist, someone she privately suspects of being a former addict, as he simply knows too much, and, in her opinion, knows it all too well. According to him the questions he poses are designed to open up those private compartments of memory that drugs and alcohol seal shut.
During the course of the sessions each “patient” is given a psychiatric evaluation, which, in Lucille’s case, produces an unexpected result. One evening she comes home and says she has been diagnosed with a condition called borderline personality disorder, or BPD. I am concerned, but she is not. She doesn’t know much about it and doesn’t want to learn. Once I’ve asked too many questions, she merely hands me a pamphlet, which explains that seventy-five percent of the population with this disorder are women. They typically have trouble with personal relationships as they don’t really see themselves as part of any community -– be it family or a circle of friends. Nearly all have severe problems with drugs and alcohol. Most have a poor body image and are never satisfied with how they look. Reading on, it describes people with BPD as potential suicides, with a full ten percent succeeding in their attempt. An overwhelming majority of BPDs were sexually abused as children.
Lucille all over again. Looking over at her as she reads a paperback novel on the sofa, I’m suddenly taken by a sense of empathy and dread. When I ask Lucille about some of the unsettling statistics, she would seem to have no idea. No one has discussed the diagnosis with her at any length; she hasn’t even read the pamphlet. With the mention of sexual abuse, she says she’s going to turn in early.
Once she’s gone, my mind is taken with mental portraits. Lucille the little girl. Lucille and the old men in her life. Lucille the adult in the act of perpetual escape.
The upshot of all this is that the therapy seems to be working. A new serenity descends upon daily life. Lucille comes home in the evening a little more buoyant than the day before. She’s now collected, moving through her day with greater rudder. At first I suspect it might be a mere swelling of confidence, a sort of emotional counterpart to her surgery. But this seems to run deeper than that. She seems to have remembered who she once was. In the midst of this calm sea I call Dustin to tell him the news. His tone is subdued, gravely remorseful for having had even the most tangential role in Lucille’s arrest. “The three of us go way back,” he groans. “Remember that mansion I gave you guys the keys to all those years ago?”
“That’s where the story began.”
The conversation then strays for a while before inevitably returning to Lucille.
“She’s in rehab eight hours a day, five days a week.”
There’s a pause.
“So it’s outpatient rehab,” he says.
“It’s like going to a job every day.”
After another curious pause I ask if anything’s wrong.
“No, not really.”
“What is it?”
He won’t come out and say what’s bothering him, but when I press him, he says in a muted tone, “Outpatient rehab has a mixed reputation.”
“What’s mixed about it?”
“It’s thought to be for people who won’t take the time to deal with their drug problem. They meet other serious drug addicts there, so it also turns out to be this place to network.”
“I thought I was calling with good news.”
“If you’re serious about kicking a habit you don’t enroll in outpatient rehab.”
“I enrolled her,” I say. “Sorry to report it’s working.”
“Sterling, nothing could make me happier than to see it work,” he groans.
“Then you should be happy.”
“That’s great… it’s just, I don’t know…” Then, as though reciting a message baked in a fortune cookie, he says cryptically, “Beware of any new friends.”
“Whose new friends?”
“Hers.”
“I’m her only friend and she’s sober as a nun.”
“Well, that’s the rap on outpatient rehab. Now I’ll butt out.”
I’m talking to a know-it-all. That, I want to say, is the rap on you, Dustin. A comfortable OBGYN flashing his street creds.
The conversation ends with an air of forced politeness, and in its calm wake I come to feel that I am the know-it-all. What I know is that I am good for Lucille. Ironically, the next time I meet with Dustin at a reunion in College Station, he denies in front of all my friends and his wife (I was best man at his wedding) that we ever had this conversation, and that I was just pussy whipped. I was shocked, but then I remembered that Dustin had repeatedly failed chemistry in high school because of his poor memory, and that when we started A&M, he couldn’t have passed chemistry without my help. Apparently, his memory hadn’t really improved over the years.
The program quietly comes to a conclusion just as her court date arrives. Addressing the bar, she looks like a million bucks, sharply dressed in a floral summer dress, big bosomed, confident, cheerful – a freshly tuned bride-to-be. Documents showing the voluntary nature of the enrollment and completion of an accredited drug rehab program are presented to the judge. He is visibly pleased, which he expresses in a motion to suspend the sentence of my fiancée’s class 4 felony conviction.
A thousand maxims spring to mind. No risk, no reward. Never mind what people say. Trust your instincts. Don’t let the bastards get you down. The one that rings truest of all is one of my own: Lucille needs me.