Jim

“Hi, my name is Pam. It’s been...twenty-four hours since my last drink. Well, almost. Technically I still have two more to go before it’s nine o’clock, so we’ll see what happens.”

It was the first time since I’d started going to these meetings that I actually looked up from my lap. Someone in this circle was saying something that didn’t drip with depression, didn’t shed a spotlight on failures and put everyone else crawling into their own transgressions. 

Someone was telling a goddamn joke.

In the middle of an AA meeting.

I couldn’t help it. I chuckled. 

The sound was strange, though; laughter was so foreign to my vocal chords as of late that it felt awkward as it crawled up my throat. 

I followed the line of wary eyes around the circle. Some people looked angry, some genuinely offended that someone could actually crack a joke in this circle of seriousness. One woman was clutching her heart, which made my eyebrows skyrocket; she wasn’t serious, was she? Some kicked their shoes across the hardwood of the gym floor uncomfortably. 

But when I finally found her, sitting to my two-o’clock across the circle, it was obvious that she was the culprit. 

She looked mildly offended, even angrily put off that only one person had laughed. Her eyebrows pinched towards the middle, one of them slightly raised as she crossed her arms, a gesture that said she was done talking for the night, that she was closing herself off from the circle of trust, and the judgement free zone that was really anything but.

Normally, I spent my time here tuning out the sob stories and the tales of progress. I used my time spent in this gym to get lost in memories, to let them absorb me in a different setting than my living room couch (since I lived with my sister now, and she refused to let me wallow) or the neighborhood barstool (since Joe, the bartender, was basically refusing to serve me, and I was halfway convinced that he had sent out my picture to every bar within a twenty-mile radius so that others would do the same).

But tonight, with my head still buzzing from the laughter that had broken up this stuffy circle, and my body suddenly wanting to chase that feeling like the high I wasn’t getting anymore, my attention was suddenly pulled towards something that wasn’t counting the slats on the gym floor.

I watched her, trying my best not to look like I was staring. But I couldn’t help it.

She was so much different than the usual crowd of our sad little circle. Most people who joined appeared sad or sullen. Some were angry. There were plenty who showed up, twitched with want and withdrawal, and left before we were halfway done with our confessions. But not her.

She put on a good front, with the way that she kept her body closed, all crossed legs and arms, feigning indifference in the way that she kept picking at her fingernails. But I could tell, oh boy could I tell, that she was shaking inside.

Her eyes were the dead giveaway. And I knew all about that, what with the way that my family was still doing their best to paint on smiles and act like everything was back to normal when their eyes always, always told a different story when they looked at me. 

Her eyes weren’t sad, though. They were cold. Devoid, almost, of any semblance of life. 

It could have been from the drug. I’d seen plenty of people come through the church doors at rock bottom, so completely empty that this was their last hope, the bars on their eyes a telltale sign of whiskey prison. But I knew that look well. I had seen it in the mirror, stared it down and willed it to go away and memorized the bloodshot lines in the hazel of my eyes until I couldn’t take my own pathetic looks anymore. 

The mask she wore on her face wasn’t this one though. She wasn’t imprisoned solely by the bottle tonight. It was  more than that.

Someone, or something, had done this to her, had sucked her soul straight from her lips and drained all of the color and care and joy and emotion with it, leaving behind someone who was trying so hard not to care, that in reality, the care was clawing at her eyelashes to get out, for someone to see it and wrap her up and show her what it was to feel again.

And here I was, ten yards away, staring into it. 

I spent the last half hour of time trying to read her, to pick up any tiny tick of her body or spark in her eyes that would tell me who did this to her, would tell me why she was suddenly sitting here with her butt in one of the stupid metal chairs that we set up every week. But then, we were closing in prayer, and I where I usually took this time, the time where you were supposed to close your eyes, to let the wave of my own memories drown me to the bottom of the ocean, I kept them wide open this time, and watched as she pinched her eyes shut, trying her best to look like she just wanted to get this over with, but losing the battle to the the look on her face that screamed help me.

I never stayed for donuts and coffee. The donuts were always stale and coffee didn’t quench any thirst I needed. The warmth reminded me of everything I was in this room to avoid and I never quite understood why they had beverages of any sort at all.

But here she was, with that still haunted look in her eye. The scowl in her eyebrows said Don’t fuck with me. The way she bit her lip and tugged on the sleeve of her jean jacket said otherwise.

So I did the exact opposite of what I had been trying my best to do in the time I had been coming to this church gymnasium. 

I made myself busy, filling a cup with steaming coffee that I was going to hate every drop of, and I walked up to her and started a conversation. It went against every rule I had put in place for myself when in came to AA meetings, my rules about not making any connections with anyone. I didn’t want to so much as keep track of names. Following those easy rules wouldn’t let anyone here get to me.

Because if they got to me, then they’d find out. If I let them get to me, it would all come flooding back. And I sure as hell wasn’t ever going to be ready for that. 

I shoved my fidgeting free hand into my pocket, the nervous energy sure to be a dead giveaway, like she was a dog who could smell my fear.

“That was a funny joke back there,” I started, feeling the words scratch up my throat, so unused to actually making sound.

She twitched in my direction, clearly not ready for the intrusion, but I saw her features soften, as if in recognition.

“Oh. Yeah, thanks. Tough crowd tonight apparently. Thanks for indulging.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes by far, as if making her lips do anything but pout and frown was almost painful, but it was a start.

“Anytime,” I chuckled, staring down at my own coffee, the thick brown liquid still not a substitute for the bitterness that I was constantly willing to appear in the styrofoam cup. “I’m Jim by the way.”

Tugging my hand out of my pocket, I extended it in her direction. 

“Pam.”

She smiled in that pained way, like she really wanted to be happy but the vice inside tugged tightly in the opposite direction, doing its best to hold her down and make her miserable. Her eyes crinkled as she slipped her small hand into my palm, its coldness, the dead weight in my grip, matching everything about her that had put her in this place.

But in the same moment, there was something screaming inside of me to find out more, to peel back the paint and know what joy once looked like in her pale green eyes.

Our hands softly fell to the wayside, and I slipped mine soundlessly into my pocket, fidgeting with the ring of keys that I found there. A sudden heat rushed to my face, and my thumb dove around for that keychain, the feel of its metal ridges instantly soothing my nerves as my heartbeat began to normalize.

“Ordinarily, I’d ask if you wanted to get a drink, but under the circumstances, I feel like that wouldn’t be appropriate.”

She pulled me out of memory lane before the engine had fully revved, and I was surprised that she had drawn an almost genuine laugh out of me for the second time that night when laughter wasn’t something I generally did anymore.

“Yeah, that...you might get a nasty lecture from Susan over there,” I said, hitching my thumb towards the large throng of people.

“Good to know.”

She gazed, almost wistfully, towards them, the group that was eating stale donuts and putting arms around shoulders to console and congratulate and give advice. When she gazed back up at me, her smile looked drunk, like the alcohol from twenty-four hours prior was still buzzing somewhere dormant in her veins, even though I could tell from the way that her body was fidgeting and her eyes were twitching that she was sitting in desperate want.

“So...is it socially acceptable to get a burger after these things, then?”

“Burgers are good,” I nodded in approval. My tongue felt tingly; all of the time spent not talking, and suddenly here I was making actual conversations.

After a minute of standing there awkwardly, I pushed out a soft laugh and cocked my head towards the door.

“C’mon. Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

Stepping into the cool May breeze seemed to knock her over, like fresh air was a foreign substance and she was an astronaut on a strange planet without a helmet. She closed her eyes, pausing on the sidewalk, almost like she was trying to decide whether she was in pain, or if she was just going to let her body enjoy this.

“God, I didn’t think I could take the depressing any longer,” she joked, reaching into her purse to pull out a box of cigarettes. “Smoke?”

She offered me one, and there was a large part of me that wanted to take it, to let the nicotine quell the dull ache in my core for some form of relief.

So I did.

I fumbled with the lighter, not having actually smoked since my college days, and only then it was a brief stint before I realized that filling your lungs with rat poison wasn’t actually fun. But after a few coughing sputters around my bud, I inhaled a breath of toxic relief, pushing a cloud of smoke into the otherwise clean Scranton air.

“You’re not a smoker.”

It was an observation, not a question. I palmed the back of my head and tried to pocket the embarrassment that was washing over me in the crimson wave of my cheeks.

“Uh...not...in a long time.”

She nodded solely in affirmation, without passing judgement; she nodded as if I had told her the sky was blue and she understood.

“I don’t really, either. It’s a nasty habit.”

But the way that her lips were wrapped so confidently around the paper, the way that smoke blew out the side of her chapped lips like she owned the oxygen in the air that she was stealing, said otherwise. It could have been that she was lying to me, but it also very well could have been a quickly learned behavior, one that she adapted to quickly to stop the want for other drugs.

She tapped the end of the cigarette, the ashes falling to the ground like dead leaves. The next drag she took was like a diver coming up for air and inhaling a fresh breath, the tight muscles in her face seeming to relax as nicotine took the driver’s seat.

We stood in silence as she finished her cigarette and I putzed on mine, stomping it under my toe after I’d sucked about half the life into me. My lungs were already complaining, and I was anticipating cotton mouth of a different kind when I woke up in the morning.

“So. This burger you speak of…”

She waved her finger in the air in a gesture that said Where is it? and Are we going anytime soon? so I dug around in my pocket for my keys, rubbing my thumb over the ridges of the keychain again to quell the building shakes.

“You want me to drive?” I asked as we headed for the parking lot.

“Nah. I’ll just follow you. Wouldn’t want to make you have to double back to drop me off here again.”

It made sense, and I nodded once before ducking into my own car and hanging on the breaks until I saw her headlights behind me.

We settled side by side on bar stools at the counter inside of Six East, and I gulped down the irony of it all, that we very well could have met under similar circumstances, but with poor lighting instead of bright fluorescence, with tall glasses of biting liquid that threatened to put the world on its head, instead of greasy nourishment that would absorb all of that hate. 

We both ordered burgers and nursed matching Coke-A-Colas, probably both pretending that they were mixed with whiskey.

“So…” I began, chewing around my sandwich to mask how awkward my conversational skills had gotten as of late. “Was tonight your first time at group? I haven’t seen you around before.”

She finished chewing her bite, nodding heartily as she did.

“You caught me,” she said as she swallowed. “I popped my Alcoholics Anonymous cherry tonight. And you were there to witness it! Congratulations.”

I shook my head and chuckled, staring down at my slowly disappearing fries, suddenly worried that my mask of food was slowly dwindling and I would soon have nothing to hide behind.

“How long have you been going?” she asked, staring off behind the counter herself.

I slugged back some soda, taking a long swallow before answering.

“Umm...about a month, month and a half, maybe?”

Seven weeks, actually. I had the days counted down to a science by now. How many it had been since my life had fallen apart. How many days it had taken until I was drowning, my diet mainly consisting of whiskey and snotty tears. Exactly how many phone calls I ignored from my boss, from my family, until they were banging at my front door. 

How long it took Larisa to finally find me passed out, face down in my own vomit. How many times she threatened to take me to rehab before I got any worse.

I could tick off exactly how many days I spent with each of three different therapists before telling them to turn in the jacket and seeking counsel from Dr. Jack Daniels instead, before Larisa hauled my ass to someone who actually worked for a little while, before talking about the feelings were too much and I just wanted to be numb again.

It was all under the pretense of how many days it took for her to move me into her place, Larisa making sure I stayed on her regimen of eating real food and not sleeping until noon and going to bed at six o’clock to shut out my own misery.

I snapped back to reality, realizing that I had gone swimming in my own head again. She was patient though, because she obviously understood.

“So did you just decide to be a mute tonight?” she started up again, cocking an eyebrow at me. “No soul dropping confessions of how hard it is to stay sober?”

I huffed out a laugh and dipped a french fry into the pool of ketchup on my plate.

“No,” I admitted plainly. “No. I don’t really talk when I’m in there.”

It was the most transparent I had been in almost three hundred sixty five days. Not with my sister, not with my therapists. But for some reason, with this girl, who seemed almost as broken as I was, it was a little bit easier.

She hummed low in acceptance, seeming to ponder what I had said, to toss it back and forth with the tilt of her head.

“Well, after my first experience, I can see why you don’t,” she said finally. “It’s kind of a tough crowd in there.”

She chuckled. But I was getting really introspective all of a sudden, which was as invigorating as it was frightening.

“Exactly,” I started, stabbing the butt of a french fry into the cool ceramic of my plate. “But like...I don’t know. Those people don’t know me. And I really don’t...want them to know me. You know?”

It was as close to the truth as I could get. They didn’t know my story, and in order for them to truly understand why I came to that circle every week and sat there motionless, I would have to tell them my story. But what was the point in opening up to total strangers when in the end, it was just going to tear my wounds open and shatter me into unsalvageable pieces?

“Oh, I get it. Trust me.”

It sounded like she was scoffing, and I was almost offended, but when I turned my head to judge her expression, her eyes were softer than they had been all night.

As I let her sit in the silence, I realized that she was swimming now, too.

“Like, why reopen the wound only for a bunch of strangers to dump a truck of salt in it, right?”

“Yeah,” I chuckled, “exactly.”

Neither of us needed to say more, because for the first time, someone actually got it. Actually understood all of the fucked up notions in my head. So she didn’t have to explain it any further. And neither did I.

But for some reason, there she was, staring at her plate with her curly hair falling in front of her face, just enough so that if I wanted to see the pain in her eyes that I heard in her voice, I’d have to make a collective effort.

“They don’t get to know what I’ve gone through just to judge. They don’t get to make me relive my demons just to pile on more pain.”

I didn’t know if she was talking more to me or to herself, but I just let her, nodding in solidarity because she was flatly saying everything I’d been screaming inside of my head every time my sister told me to Just talk to someone about it.

“Come home with me.”

For the second time tonight, it wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

She was looking straight ahead as spoke, her voice blending with the lull of the fans in the diner kitchen. When I didn’t say anything after a minute or two, she turned to me, the expression in her eyes sure to haunt me for the foreseeable future.

Her eyes were captured by ghosts whose fingers I could see clutching the life out of her, doing their best to hold her back. But the dull green was aching for something to rip her from those clutches, to make her feel something again. 

I didn’t do this sort of stuff. Didn’t go home with women I’d just met. Didn’t smoke cigarettes for sport.

Didn’t ever to drown my sorrows in the bottom of a bottle.

That wasn’t me.

But I was doing a hell of a lot that wasn’t me lately.

So she said Come home with me.

And I did.