The Recovered

The weekly trash service is ten minutes late again. They usually arrive well before I refill the Mr. Coffee to brew a second pot. They used to be punctual. Frank, who lives two houses down, left a washer machine one foot from the middle of the road. They don’t dispose of washer machines. Frank should know that. Their shouting puts Chico on high-alert. He barks as Providence sanitation department’s finest beep on down the road. Johnnie Walker mocks me from above the fridge.

I slide out of my loafers and tap my feet under the table, listening to the men scrape Frank’s dilapidated washer out from the road. The pen I’m writing with slips between my left index finger and thumb, hitting the desk with a thud. Tactfully, I recover and remember what you said:

“Write about stuff. The rest will follow.”

The thought compacts and ferments in my head, as the truck outside travels down the road. I reach for my fountain pen.

What stuff?

I look across my desk and through the pass-through window I rounded out last summer. The project began as a series of five-inch holes in no particular sequence. My attempt at drunken demolition with a sixteen-pound sledgehammer. I was not successful, but you never failed of reminding me of that.

What’s stuff to a recovered alcoholic? Is stuff my llama shaped coffee cup, my A.A. pin for 2-year sobriety, or is it the wind-up-bird I keep in my pocket for sunny-days? You’d say something akin to a parable from the Tao Te Ching. I can see you sitting in room 104, a silent four by six office, drumming your fingers on the desk awaiting some subliminal spark to catalyze some piece of random advice for patient number three.

“Memories become tsunamis after sobriety. Writing will make sure the waves don’t wash you away.”

You talked like people were just waiting to award you the Nobel Peace Prize for A.A. sponsor of the decade. Looking back now, the truth is you helped me to recover the important things, those things a human sometimes neglects but can never exhaust. Let me remind you how I remember things from back then. I reset the wind-up bird’s spring.

I never got used to fatherhood: the school ceremonies, the afterschool care pick-ups, the awkward discussions at dinner. Life was easier without fatherhood there was less to be concerned about. Much easier to pick-up your kid 26 weekends out of the year than to be a father. Frank told me I should forget about fatherhood and focus on myself, but you were more persistent.

Tick.

Your advice helped me. Although your office was full with books or people, you also welcomed alcoholics like me. However, after I left the center the first-time last year for my son’s graduation, I took a hiatus from advice. The world had closed me off, so I figured I should use my own ideas. But even now, a year later, Frank comes over and tells me the same thing you did. “Write about stuff.”

Stuff. Stuff. Stuff. Tick tick.

At the rehabilitation center, I had started to crank my wind-up-bird each morning before I went for coffee in the chow hall. I think the constant ticking helped me think, like a metronome does for musicians. Funny thing, soberness, it seems to make remembering part of life again, although the people in each memory are more of an afterthought. The wind-up-bird helped me create some routine. In fact, that’s what you advised then: create a routine. Frank told me you’d help, but you did better. You made stuff worth doing. Thankfully, I can’t get out of it now. Well, is a routine considered stuff? I slip my feet back into my house slippers. They are dry and sheathed in fuzz.

One morning in rehab, the janitor knocked a frame off the wall with the end of her mop; she winced at me, hoping not to have disturbed me. I had tried my best not to laugh. You advised me to bottle-up my laughter and save it for later; you were right about that. The thought of crashing glass reminds me of the time my son dropped one of my martini glasses after a long day at work. He was a budding mixologist back then. It was Friday evening, and I sat in my apartment balcony.

Tick. Is this stuff?

The glass breaking made my back stiffen against the patio chair. I had squeezed my lighter so tight; I thought I’d split open the plastic casing. He was in the kitchen making the first drink of the night… Or was it the second? Admittedly, this was over ten years ago, and he was about twelve-years old. The glass-door shook as I slid it open. The blinds fluttered from the force of the door sliding open. I believe there was a smile on my face, but that may just be me projecting bias onto the past.

From across the tethered leather sofa in the living room, I saw his head hanging over the Formica countertop in the kitchen and asked, “What do you think you’re doing in there? This isn’t your stepfather’s bar.” My son had taken a step back from the countertop, “I’m sorry,” he said. “It slipped.”

As I rounded the corner into the kitchen, I noticed a stream of neon-green liquid flowing through the 1/16th culverts between the grouted tiles. The brand-new stainless-steel shaker had been forced open, and my half-mixed drink splattered standard 80 proof vodka and sour apple pucker all over our kitchen. Hell, even the microwave opposite to the sink had vodka dripping off the handle. I had gathered my anger and resealed it as the liquid touched my dress shoes. I had asked him to look up. He did. I had thought he hid his innocence inside obedience, but he was just being a kid. His smile had disappeared from him, just like the week before when he dropped an entire bottle of Grey Goose Vodka down a flight of stairs. I had suspected he did it on purpose. I had assumed maybe his mother had put him up to it.

Mr. Coffee is silent now. My second pot of coffee is done. I set my fountain pen down and lift myself from the desk to refill my llama cup with fresh coffee just as the wind-up bird stops ticking. I walk past some pictures that I hung on the wall last weekend. My son is in all of them. Seems that I ordered them to match his aging. The last one is the most recent, taken last year at his college graduation. He really has grown up. Crazy to think we haven’t talked since then. Frank told me my son is getting married next week. He said I should call him.

The coffee station at the end of the countertop is the only warmth in the house. The phone sits on the round table in the living room, just across the kitchen’s granite top island. But I have never felt as distant from it as I do now. Seems that it exists outside of me, apart from everything and everywhere I’ve been. I could call, but I would have to speak a different language. A language he wouldn’t understand coming from me: kind.

I pour my coffee at the countertop, and I hear Frank scraping metal off of his washer as he hauls it back onto the road. Frank’s pushing that washer out to the road again. I should go out to help him, but I’m comfortable in here. I’m safe. So, I try to block out his frustrations and walk back toward my desk. The chair’s still warm. I rewind the wind-up bird.

Tick tick tick.

You said the memories would matter; but more importantly, you said the writing would help. I reach for a couple more blank pages to continue writing. Frank’s commotion outside seems to have ended but the dragging of metal across the asphalt reminds me when Dan, the deli attendant, told me my son’s wife miscarried six months ago.

More stuff.

It was a Sunday like any other. My usual contention at the peanut butter section and the paranormal activity of the market’s intercom ghost. A patron on the aisle over had mistreated a gaggle of wine bottles, so I saved one when she wasn’t looking.

I walked into aisle seven and saw ten shelves of mix matched varieties of peanut butter including: chunky or smooth, natural or organic, almond or peanut, Jif or Peter Pan, glass or plastic, palm oil or high fructose corn syrup etc. I never thought peanut butter politics would infiltrate our solitary and sacred market store in Providence, Rhode Island. I mean, really, how many word combinations did we need? Not to mention, the price didn’t change based on ingredients or grind method, price depended on the brand.

The intercom buzzed and died off after a brief grunt from some attendant (or non-attendant), sitting in a four by four room, alone. I listen for the announcement, but all I catch is a slew of glass bottles, rattling in a cart a few aisles over. That patron should’ve grabbed some sponges or bread loafs, if she truly cared about those bottles.

Of course, bottles. Bottles are stuff.

Seems like the alcohol companies got marketing right once and stuck with it. They let their longevity speak for the quality of their stock. People didn’t buy liquor anymore; they bought the idea of Johnnie Walker, walking like Johnnie Walker, becoming Johnnie Walker. Maybe peanut butter doesn’t connect as well to people, the marketing companies are trying to – with all this diversity – they’re trying to reel in a big fish; sadly, I was the fish who was drowning in alcohol. When I made the corner of aisle seven onto the main stretch, the wine connoisseur was numbed-still in front of the cheese cooler, attempting to make a single selection from Brie to Parmesan. I snatched up the merlot to lighten her load and walked on, minding the soothing music guiding me through this silent frenzy.

I walked toward the deli counter and grabbed a ticket from the red spool. There were two other people in line before me, including Charles, my son, and a young eager kid tapping his foot on the linoleum floor as if he wanted to tap through it. Dan, the deli attendant, is all smiles.

Dan hands Charles cheese and ham, who then turns to the check-out cashiers without looking back, racing his shadow. The boy jogged up to the counter and requested a pound of roast beef. No brand. No particular cut. Just roast beef. Dan smiled and obliged the boy, as if they had some secret agreement. My number popped up on the hanging screen in bright red digits.

“Three pounds of Black Forest Ham. Cut to one-ounce slices,” I said.

After slicing the deli meat, Dan handed me a plastic zip-loc, and I plopped it into my cart between the eggs, Jif, and stolen wine.

“You just missed Charlie, he ordered the same thing,” he said, as I was walking away.

I reversed my cart back to the glass counter-top. “Oh, yeah?” I asked.

Dan leaned over the counter to make the conversation private. “You know, his wife miscarried yesterday,” he said.

“I don’t care what he ordered. I don’t care about his life.”

“Your kid’s a good one, you know. He needs you,” Dan said.

He needs me. Is this what you were talking about when you said your memories can wash you away? Is this the stuff you asked me to look out for?

I drove home, speeding across yellow lights and blaring Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer” all the way home. When I returned home, my trash bin was toppled over. In fact, it was the only trash bin not upright in the entire neighborhood. Chico’s fertilizer and rotten onions painted a mosaic over the driveway. I swerved over the pile of trash and parked my car beneath the cypress tree. I collected my groceries and merlot and went inside.

The waste managers were early. Frank told me to take it out the night before. But I hadn’t, the patio chair and Johnnie Walker cradled me to sleep that night. My dog Chico barked as I wrestled with the padlock, hitting the patio’s cast-iron gate. The smell of the art on the driveway compounded with the fresh cut grass on Frank’s yard plunged my soured stomach into a furnace.

Boy, I don’t miss that.

The sun nodded at me in defiance as it brushed over the cypress tree; my toes were moist with a thick, pasty sweat from walking in fuzz-lined slippers during a heat wave. I kick off my house slippers in rebuttal. The sanitation department’s finest beep on down the road. I’m amazed how early I woke up, considering that night’s drinking session led me down two bottles. Chico was still barking, protecting me from the world. Johnnie Walker mocked me from the table. I was trying to die, but he just wouldn’t let me.

I laid down my groceries onto the tile floor and knocked Johnnie off the table. After picking up the mess, I waddled to the kitchen with my groceries. And that was the beginning of my recovery. A week later, I was sitting in orientation for rehabilitation at your center, as dry as a box of baking soda, deodorizing that week’s cohort of alcoholics. The next step, what you called making direct amends with people seems a bit harder.

Stuff… This is just writing, but it’s a good thing. Tick tick tick.

The pen had embedded into my finger-tips, taxing my pinched nerves. Chico’s sitting on the couch just over to my left. He always looks so eager, so filled with wanting. Breakfast. Must be time for breakfast. I walk over to the fridge and grab the eggs and cheese. The carton of eggs makes a mute landing onto the granite countertop. Just how many chickens have people eaten today? Between the dinner-plate sized five-star omelets on cruise ships and the skimpy breakfast platters at McDonalds, surely a few million. Who knows? Who cares?

As an appetizer, I dip my coffee spoon into the Jif jar. One tablespoon for me, one for Chico. He’s elated. I open the carton of eggs to scramble for breakfast. I pour another cup of coffee into my llama cup. Chico stays at my feet, as if the eggs were already cooked and cheesy- as if these eggs are his. I toss a bacon flavored treat over the recliner in the living room. It bounces off the T.V. and falls onto the rug. He’s content. Easy to please. Easy to ignore. Frank said I can’t be friends with a dog, but I beg to differ. Chico won’t ever betray me. He comes when he’s called, he waits by my bedroom door each morning, and -most importantly- he isn’t smart enough to disagree with me.

People just batter their lives up with feelings and gestures of kindness and expect every person – and dog – to flip for joy over their method of frying themselves senseless. Two years ago, I thought the best way to get your way in life was to lie. I wonder if Charlie’s phone is still in service. I wonder whether he could come over for a while. Spend some quality time with me and Chico. You know the sort of quality time you earn from family who comes to visit you at your worst? Those interactions when you forget how long it’s been since you’ve seen them.

Too long. Too awkward. Back to breakfast.

Chico barks. Must be someone at the door. I turn off the stovetop. A crouched shadow extends an arm onto the patio floor, picking up old pieces of glass. Three even knocks. It’s not stuff. It’s Charlie