I’m trying to focus on reading the Pledges book when Tommy pokes his head in my room.
“Just wanted to see how you’re adjusting,” he says, cheerful as ever.
“Oh, great,” I say. Even in this ridiculously downtrodden state, I seem to care about what my drug counselor thinks of me so I don’t want him to know how scared and miserable I feel. I try to smile. “Everyone’s really nice,” I add, even though it’s a bald-faced lie.
Tommy just looks at me. “Why don’t you and I take a walk?” he asks.
A walk, like anything else right now, sounds absolutely unappealing, but what are my options? To sit here and think about how much I must have fucked up my life to be ensconced in this place with a bunch of losers?
“Can I smoke?” I find myself asking.
“Absolutely,” he says, as he helps me to my feet. “In fact, I encourage you to.”
I grab my Camel Lights and my lighter, slide on a pair of flipflops and follow Tommy outside as he picks up a pebble that was sitting on a picnic table covered with ashtrays and starts walking down the Pledges entryway toward the street.
“I’m going to say something and I don’t want you to be offended by it,” Tommy says as he tosses the pebble onto the ground and leads me onto a busy street lined with thrift stores and fast-food places. It’s my first time seeing civilization since I checked in a few days ago, and it seems shocking that the real world has actually only been a few hundred feet away.
“Shoot,” I say, lighting up what has to be my eighty-seventh cigarette of the day. I had to imagine that getting offended was probably going to be the nicest thing that would happen to me today, now that my life was shaping up to be a series of depressing incidents brightened only by Camel Lights and the occasional brownie. Besides, I like Tommy.
“You strike me as pretty much spiritually dead,” Tommy says as he leads me across the street. He looks at me sadly while squinting his eyes, as if my face were the sun and he’s not wearing sunglasses.
I’d expected him to tell me he thought I seemed really depressed or like I wasn’t fitting in or that I’d clearly let myself go physically but this didn’t seem particularly offensive. I wasn’t, in fact, even sure what he meant.
“Spiritually dead?” I ask, exhaling smoke. “Well, I’m not religious. And,” I add with a smile, “I’m not remotely offended.”
For once, Tommy doesn’t smile. He stops walking and steps in front of me so that we’re standing face to face. “Spirituality doesn’t always have to do with religion,” he says.
I know what he’s doing. I know that sober people are obsessed with everyone else believing in God—even though they called it a “higher power” so as not to put off people who weren’t Catholic or whatever—and Tommy is going to try to do the God hard-sell on me.
“Absolutely,” I say and hope that’s the end of the conversation and we can just walk back to the rehab in peace.
“Going to the beach and staring at the ocean can be spiritual,” he says, standing perfectly still. “Going to a pet store and getting on your hands and knees and playing with puppies can be spiritual. Going on a walk and smelling flowers can be spiritual.”
For a straight guy, Tommy is pretty dramatic, and something about his heartfelt spirituality lecture makes me smile. I have to admit that sitting on a beach, playing with puppies, and smelling flowers sounds pretty damn nice. And I can’t remember the last time I did any of those things.
Group that afternoon isn’t all that different from group the day before, but this time the person who speaks gets to decide who talks next. I sit there picking my cuticles, feeling fairly safe that I’m doing a decent job of remaining mostly invisible. And I’m glad for it once the meeting gets going and I start hearing the bullshit coming out of people’s mouths. A “pink cloud” is apparently a space you get in when you’re sober and everything seems so good that you have to pinch yourself to make sure you’re not dreaming, and roughly half the Pledges residents claim to be there. I can’t for the life of me figure out why everyone is claiming something so ridiculous—it’s not like they’re being graded on their rehab behavior and performance. They’re probably all actors, I think. Like everyone else in L.A.
Finally it’s the hot guy’s turn to speak. After introducing himself as “Justin, alcoholic,” he says, “I have to be honest—I’m really not feeling all this pink cloud shit.” He pushes his hair out of his eyes, and I basically fall in love with him on the spot, for both his cheekbones as much as the fact that he seems like the only honest one in the room. “I miss using with every pore in my body. I fucking hate being sober. It just feels so…unnatural for me.”
“That’s just your disease talking to you,” Tommy says.
I expect Justin to snap that diseases don’t talk, and that most people don’t believe all this alcoholism-is-a-disease crap, anyway, but he actually nods.
“I know it is, and I know this feeling will pass because it did the other day, but I guess I’m just…pissed off that I’m an alcoholic, a drug addict, whatever. It just doesn’t seem fair that my friends can party and not end up in here with all you crazies.”
Even though I expect people to be offended, everyone nods and laughs and Robin even claps. She’s probably trying to sleep with him, I reason. But I can’t begin to explain what’s going on with the rest of them. They know they’re crazy and find it funny? People who know they’re crazy should be seriously alarmed and not amused, I decide. Even Justin starts laughing, and I find myself incredibly confused by his behavior. He seems so cool, but maybe he’s just as weird as everyone else. I mean, why is he looking so damn cheerful when he just shared about how pissed off he is?
Just as I’m deciding that Justin may not be worth my adoration, I hear him say my name. I’m simultaneously shocked, flattered, and horrified but try to remain cool.
“I’m Amelia, and I’m a drug addict,” I start and pause for them all to say my name in unison like they’re students in some sort of special ed class. My fear of speaking suddenly evaporates and I feel annoyed and angry and unable to be fake like the rest of them. “And, well, I think this fucking sucks, too. I don’t understand why I’m here.” To my horror, I start to cry and suddenly realize I can’t stop. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” I say through wracking sobs. “I wasn’t supposed to end up here. I’m from a good family. I should have known better.” I end this dramatically, with a heaving sob, and the gay guy—Peter—pats my back as I cry. When I look up, I realize they’re all just staring at me in silence.
“Amelia,” Tommy says gently. “Pick someone else to share.”
Tears continue to stream down my face as I point to Hawaiian Tropic.
“I’m Robin and I’m an alcoholic,” she says. And then she turns to face me. “And Amelia, can I just thank you so much for your share? It was like the most honest, beautiful thing in the world. I so exactly felt that way when I came in here, so thanks so much for reminding me of why I’m so grateful to be here.”
Part of me wants to remind Robin that she’s been here like a week so thinking back to when she came in couldn’t have been that much of a stretch, but at the same time I feel something sort of unleash in my heart, and for a split second I wonder if maybe I am in the right place. If this ditzy, fake-titted sometime bikini model felt like this a week ago and she’s now clapping her hands at being called crazy, maybe there’s a chance that I can learn from these people and not always be miserable.
Joel shares and then Tommy announces that it’s time to wrap up group. He looks at me. “Before we end, I’d like to thank you, Amelia, for your honesty.”
I’m starting to feel almost embarrassed by all this attention—something I’d never known was possible.
“This disease takes people from jail and people from Yale,” Tommy continues and he looks me directly in the eye. “And it’s not your fault. Do cancer patients beat themselves up for getting sick?” He’s clearly on some kind of a roll because he then adds, “Remember, your disease takes on all kinds of forms, and telling you that you’re a piece of shit because you’re sitting in a folding chair in a rehab is just one of those.”
I smile at Tommy. Maybe there’s something to this disease thing. Or maybe just hearing that people from Yale end up in rehab, too, makes me feel better.
We end the group by holding hands and saying the serenity prayer, which I’d only heard before I came here at the beginning of a Sinead O’Connor song. I have to admit I find it far more comforting than any of the prayers I used to have to say at temple. But it also has the added advantage of not being in Hebrew.
As I reach down to pick up my cigarettes, Robin walks over to me and gives me a hug.
“Thank you so much,” she says as she holds me.
“Thank you,” I say back to her and mean it, surprising myself for not immediately trying to disentangle.
“I love you,” she says, and I don’t even flinch. In just a few days, I’ve noticed that people in rehab announce their love for each other more often than honeymooners. “Thanks for passing the Equal,” someone might say at a coffee table, “I love you.” Or, “Your share was awesome—I love you.” But this was the first time anyone here has said it to me.
And then the most shocking thing of all happens.
“I love you, too,” I say, and even though I only say it because I feel like I have to, as soon as it’s out of my mouth I realize that I feel better than I have in months.