Crystal Clean (24 page)

Chapter 2
5

“I don’t get it.” Rene’s sucking on a hard candy, as usual. She used to weigh over three hundred pounds but her gastric bypass surgery and chronic alcoholism, has turned her into a rail. She’s exactly my height. Five ten.  I envy her slim frame, but she’s always getting dizzy because of her low blood pressure or blood sugar, so she’s constantly sucking on hard candy. “You’re so smart, Kim. Why would you let that happen to you?”

We’re sitting in the “co-dependency” group with the other women, and the topic is Allan and
me
.

“What do you mean?” I ask. Inside, I’m cringing the way I always do when someone talks about me being smart. I hate it. I don’t know why, but it always makes me uncomfortable
-
as if I’m a fraud and everyone’s going to find out that I’m not smart, but stupid.

It’s not just about being smart or not. I feel the same way about all compliments. My gut reaction is to think, “Bullshit,” and become suspicious of the motives of the person involved. I think they’re secretly making fun of me.
It’s a knee jerk reaction that stems from what happened
to me in grade school. It’s sad how much of my life was determined by the events of one year, and it pisses me off to think that I’ve wasted four decades vehemently rejecting and mistrusting people. I wish I absorbed people’s kindness instead of deflecting it.

“I don’t understand why you’re still with this guy, and supporting him. You’re smart, pretty and funny as hell!” You’re so full of shit, Rene, I think.
I’m not pretty
,
I’m ugly
. I start wringing my hands. “You’ve got a great personality,” she continued. “I would think you could have any man you want, but you’re with this jackass who doesn’t love you, treats you like shit and owes you
-
how much did you say?
Twenty grand?”

The room is quiet and everyone is looking at me. This is the first time I’ve really talked about Allan and me. Now that it’s come out, everyone is horrified at my situation.

“Yes,” I say, “a little over twenty thousand dollars.” I feel stupid and pathetic admitting this out loud to anyone, let alone twelve other alcoholics and addicts. It’s bad enough when I let
myself think about it, but saying it out loud is embarrassing. More than that, it feels crippling and I don’t want to feel this way. Now I’m jiggling my leg up and down. Between that and my
hand-wringing
, I probably look autistic, but at least I’m not rocking.
Yet.
“It’s hard to understand, I know,” I say, “but it’s not like Allan’s a bad person. He’s not mean or malicious, he just...”

“He just decided to sleep with a dog instead of you after everything you’ve done for him, huh?” I wish Rene would shut up. I hate it when people put me on the spot like this. “My
God
, woman, look at everything you’ve done for him:  you’ve paid his back child support, paid off traffic tickets in other states and then paid for him to keep his license so he could continue to drive long haul. You supported him for almost a year when he lost his job and you’re still paying most of the bills, right?” I’m frowning and looking at my jiggling knee, wishing I hadn’t said a thing about any of this.

“Okay,” I say. “But it’s not like I’m a saint. This summer I got his checking account number. I don’t remember how, exactly. I think maybe he played poker on my computer one night and I got it then. I don’t know. Anyway, I used it to gamble.
Just fifty dollars at first.
I don’t even know why. Maybe it was because I was mad at him. When I started playing, I was in kind of a daze and when I lost the money, I snapped out of it. I couldn’t believe I had done that. I felt
really shitty
, you know? I don’t steal, but I did from him, and I panicked. I didn’t want him to know what I’d done so I figured I would win and then deposit the winnings into his account and he wouldn’t be mad. I don’t know what was wrong with me.”

“You were high,” the counselor reminded me.

“Well, yeah, but my
God
! That’s no excuse. Anyway, I kept going. Fifty more, a hundred more, and I just panicked because it wasn’t working. I wasn’t winning. I ended up taking him for eighteen hundred dollars. I felt sick. I mean, what kind of person does that to someone?
Especially a friend?”

“What happened when he found out?” asked Betsy.

“He came home from work one day with a three-page printout from the bank and just handed it to me without saying a word.” My hands are starting to hurt from wringing them so hard and I’m staring at my lap. I’m so ashamed. I still can’t believe I did that to him. I want to cry. “I owned up to it. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I mean, he could have had me arrested! I tried to explain what happened, but it sounded just as stupid as it does
now, telling you guys.”

“So what happened?” Betsy asked.

“I paid him back.”

“What?”

“I paid him back. I was grateful I was able to. I was completely humiliated.”

“Shit, you’re still paying most of the mortgage on his house and all the bills and you paid him what you owed him when he owes you all that money?” Betsy says.

“What else was I supposed to do? He couldn’t afford to...I mean, he needed that money. I stole it from him and I paid it back. It’s different from what he owes me. Anyway, I told you, we refinanced in March so my name’s on the house now.”

“Why the hell did you do that?” I don’t want to answer this because the answer makes me feel sick.
Also because I don’t want these women to think badly of Allan.
I guess I don’t want them to know that I’m so desperate not to lose this relationship that I’ll do anything, and have done anything, to keep it going. I am sick and twisted. I am an addict and my addiction is to more than just meth.

“Well, remember when I said that last December I got tired of everything and decided I wasn’t paying the bills anymore?” They all nod. “So I told Allan that starting in January of this year, he was going to start paying the mortgage and utilities because that’s the only way I can see that he’ll ever even begin to pay me back. So he had the money for that month’s house payment, but he had an idea.
There was an auto dealership that
had gone out of business and was selling all these accessories. I don’t know what they were, like fins for the backs of cars, weather shield strips...I don’t know. Anyway, he bought them with the money that was for the house payment. He said
he thought he could go around to other dealerships and sell the accessories at a profit
. It didn’t work. He sold a few things, but most of it’s still in our garage. When our second foreclosure notice...”

“His second foreclosure notice, you mean,” says Rene.

“Okay, fine.
His second foreclosure notice.
When it came, he didn’t know what to do. There was no way to come up with the money we...he owed. Even I couldn’t put that much out at one time. It was like six grand. So he started to talk about selling the house and I...I don’t know, I couldn’t imagine being without him. I didn’t want us to go our separate ways. So it was my idea to refinance with me as the co-owner. He was all for it. He said
it was
the only way he was ever going to be able to get me any of what he owed me
. So we refi’d. It was a pain in the ass, too. I had to come up with all these records to prove that I’d been working at least the past two years. They wanted W-2’s, paystubs...I had to look legit, on paper anyway. I had to have a valid way to explain where the money was coming from. The finance lady knew I was self-employed. I told her I wrote bail bonds and had a gift basket business, but I still had to have a way to show where the money was coming from.

“Bail bond records were easy. Jill had me fill out this sheet every night that I worked showing which bonds I’d written, how much money I’d collected and my commission. Thank
God
I had the gift basket business registered legitimately. I had to show my books for the company, which I didn’t have. So I created a ledger and backdated entries so they showed I made enough money to qualify to buy a house.
Which I did.
Make enough money, I mean, but it had to be clean.”

“So did Allan know where the money was coming from?” asks Cheryl.

“Of course he did. He knew everything. He used to use meth, too, but he quit after our first year living together. Just quit one day. He said it was easy for him because he knew I always had it and he could have it anytime, so he didn’t have to jones,” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t get it, but that’s what he said, and I know he’s never touched it again.

“So anyway, we refinanced but our payments went up instead of down. Allan had gotten some kind of special financing where the payments were
fairly low
the first year or two but then went up. So even though we refi’d, the payment was thirteen hundred dollars a month. Now that my name’s on the house...”

“You’re trapped,” Rene said. I’m starting to cry a little and I know my face
is flushed
because it feels so hot.

“Well, I don’t know if that’s the right word. Let’s just say that I have too much invested
to just walk
away. Even if that’s what I wanted to do.”

“Let’s just say you’re trapped, okay?” says Betsy. She’s irritated. “Call it what it is. You’re stuck.” Now I’m really crying and I’ve gone from wringing my hands to wiping my tears.

“Let’s hear from someone else now,” the counselor says. I’m relieved to be out of the spotlight. I don’t really hear anything for the rest of the session. I’m thinking about
Allan...and the house...and
that stupid fucking dog.

It was unnerving, having a group of women nail my situation the way they did. I never talked about my relationship with Allan to anyone, and in my head it was easy to rationalize or find ways to excuse his behavior, or mine for that matter. Speaking it out loud, though, made it real. To hear Rene and the others pissed off about what was going on validated my feelings. I should be mad. I had a right to be mad.
I had a right to be furious.

Chapter 26

The part of rehab that creates the most tension for all of us is family week. It’s actually only three days but I guess they call it “week” because that’s what it feels like. Our families attend lectures and receive education about addiction. Then there
are sessions guided
by our counselors where we’re supposed to talk to each other about how addiction has affected the whole family. It means that when one member is an addict, there are problems with the whole. The intention is not to imply that our families are just as sick as we are, or that they’ve somehow caused our addiction, but to have us look at
the roles each of us assumes and how they have affected us all
.

The day before family week starts, the counselors tell us there will be no medication allowed other than our prescriptions:  no aspirin, no Tums or Rolaids, nothing extra for anxiety. We are to experience everything we feel with no chemical relief whatsoever. “Yikes,” I think. “What the hell do they have in store for us?”

I start to get nervous about my parents coming. I’ll be thrilled to see Andy for three days in a row, but I’m scared of what will happen to Mom, Dad, and me. I’m afraid they’ll hate me and think I’m disgusting. My addiction is definitely disgusting. I’m hoping they can separate the two.

The first speaker is Mike. He’s been a counselor at the Walker Center for years. The contrast between the man who’s speaking and the person the story is about is almost incomprehensible. Mike started using heroin when he was nine years old. His cousins thought it was funny to see him shoot up and that was the beginning of decades of drug use. He’s been in and out of jail and done prison time.
Hearing him tell his story tears at the mother part of me.
I want to take the child he’s speaking of and protect him from what’s to come. Strange how my maternal instincts kick in when I come across someone hurt or wounded, but they never kick in for me.

The next speaker is Dorothy. Prim and proper, she takes the stage in the small auditorium
-
the same place we exercise and sometimes have lectures. She’s prepared, complete with an easel and a large pad of paper with major points bulleted and neatly printed on consecutive pages. She even has a pointer. I always figured she was either a tee totaling, book educated do-gooder, or a
garden variety alcoholic whose biggest transgression was being too hung over to host a Tupperware party. I was wrong.

Dorothy spends the next hour sharing her story about the pill-popping, booze-drinking, NyQuil-swilling housewife she’d once been. She speaks like a master storyteller with a sense of humor that reminds me of Erma Bombeck. She talks about her children, who are themselves addicts and alcoholics, and recalls scenes of staggering up from the basement, where she’d been chugging NyQuil, and stumbling over the unconscious bodies of her grown children and their friends. “You know that little plastic cup on top of a bottle of NyQuil?” she asks. “I didn’t know what the hell that was for. It was too small to be a shot glass.”

She has the audience in the palm of her hand and my mother in tears, doubled over with laughter along with the rest of the room. She talks about her grown children struggling with their addictions and bad decisions, moving back home, and how she finally came to terms with her co-dependency. She warns our families not to pay our bills or give us money, telling them they’d only be enabling us. “If you absolutely must give your addicted children something,” she says, flipping the last page over the back of the easel, revealing the words as she speaks them, “buy ‘em underwear.”

It’s her big finish and the crowd loves her. It’s like a George Carlin concert when he uses satire to get a point across while the audience laugh their asses off. I gain a new respect for Dorothy that afternoon. She reminds me of myself:  an ordinary, average looking woman whose packaging was the perfect disguise for a life of debauchery.

The next two days are the family sessions. Most people have their significant others with them but some, like me, have their family of origin, or some part of it, attending. We’re in the group with Dorothy along with the others in her caseload. As we sit in uncomfortable chairs in a large circle of strangers, she explains the ground rules.

On the first day, the family members will talk and ask questions while we, the drug addled and afflicted, face them. We cannot respond in any way, but must listen to what each person has to say. When that person is finished, they have to tell what they are most proud of about us and why. On the second day, we will again sit in front of each loved one, answer any questions from the day before and explain what our addiction has been like for us. Then we
must say one thing we are most proud of in the other. If anyone needs a tissue, he or she must get it
themselves
. No co-dependent behavior
is tolerated
during family sessions.

One by one, the mothers, fathers, children and significant others of the patients tell personal stories of how addiction has affected their lives. Anger, sorrow and grief hang over our small circle like slow moving storm clouds on a cold winter day. Children ask their parents
why they were so mean sometimes and why didn’t they play with them anymore
. Parents wonder out loud what they’ve done to cause their children’s addiction. Spouses ask their partners about suspected infidelities, and speak of loneliness and abandonment.

My parents and son are the last to speak. Dorothy tells Andy what a good boy he’s been throughout the long day. “Is there something you would like to say to your mom, Andy?”

“Oh, ess okay.”

“Are you sad that Mom used drugs and didn’t spend time with you?”

“Oh, yeah.”
He’s smiling at everyone and flirting a little with the women. My son’s
always been
a ladies’ man and he loves being on stage. “Essa circle.”

Dorothy presses
on,
unaware that Andy isn’t comprehending what she’s saying. I can’t tell if she doesn’t understand his disability, or if she’s just trying to make him feel like part of the group or what, but I can’t say anything. Those are the rules. “Can you tell your mom how her drug use has affected you?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“What would you like to tell her?”

“Uhhmm,” he says, pushing up his glasses and straightening in his chair.
“Essa hospital, enna Mom.
Allan
, uh, Star Wars, movies, pizza.” He’s smiling so big and his grin pulls my heartstrings. He’s proud of himself right now and I want to tell him how proud I am of him of him, too but I’m not allowed to talk, so I just smile at him and hope he knows how I feel.

“Okay,” says Dorothy. “Let’s move on. Ed? How are you feeling right now?” My dad’s head
is bowed
because he’s crying a little and is embarrassed by his emotions.

“I just...I just feel so sad for everyone here,” he sniffs, wiping his eyes on his
shirt sleeve
. My mother reaches for the box of tissues.

“Chris,” Dorothy says gently, “let him get his own.”

My dad continues. “It makes me feel just awful for everything these families have gone through.
Especially the kids.”
He smiles at Betsy’s son and daughter across the circle from him.

“Ed, can you tell Kim how her addiction has affected you?
He’s looking at me with such love in his eyes and such sadness. “We’ve missed you, Kimbo.”

“Speak about how you feel,” says Dorothy.

“I’ve missed you. You’ve been away from us for so long and we don’t spend time together the way we used to. Your mom and I...I mean we...I mean I had no idea what was going on with you. I knew something was wrong, but w...I thought it was that you weren’t taking your medication. I had no idea you were using drugs. I never thought you would use drugs. I love you so
much,
Kimbo and I want you back. I want us to be a real family again. You’ve really hurt your mother. She cries almost every night and blames herself for how you and your brother turned out.”

I’ve heard my mother say this for years: “I must have been a terrible mother because look at how my children turned out.” And that was before she knew I was using drugs. Chuck sort of floated through life in his bohemian way, and I never finished college, had emotional problems and trouble holding a job. I never knew what to say. I mean, how do you respond to something like that?

He pauses and clears his throat. “I would like to know how much you’ve been using...and for how long.” He stares at me. I look back at him, hoping he can feel that I know how hard this is for him. He keeps staring expectantly. I look at Dorothy as she waits for him to continue, but he just keeps looking at me. Finally, he leans a little closer and says, “It’s now or never.”

I look at Dorothy again. I don’t think she’ll mind if I break the rules just a little bit because I know my dad has forgotten them. “I’m not supposed to talk today,” I whisper. The group chuckles some, relieved, I suppose, for a bit of levity.

“Oh,” he says.
“Right.
Sorry. I guess I’m supposed to tell her what I’m most proud of about her. I’m proud of you for being a foster mother and taking such good care of those kids. I don’t know how you did it, but I’m real proud of you for that. I was also proud of you when you lost all that weight a few years ago and were working out all the time.” He smiles at me and mouths I love you, as he wipes the last tear from the corner of his eye.

I move my chair over to sit in front of my mother. If this is difficult for my dad, she’s dying inside. Of the two, my mother has always been the more stoic one. She’s always been the main breadwinner and handled all the family’s finances. My dad has a playful side to him, but my mother is all business all the time. Sharing feelings and actually communicating have never been encouraged in my family and now here she is in front of total strangers, expected to be open and honest. I know my mother and I know she would give almost anything not to be here with these people. This is at least as bad as how she felt at her surprise anniversary party.
Probably worse.

I also know that she’s putting herself through this agony for me, and I love her for that. I look at her, smiling. She looks at me the way she did when she used to ground me when I was a teenager. She’s all business. Instinctively, I lose the smile and lower my head. This is no time for being happy. I’ve been a bad girl and now I am going to hear about it.

“Kimberly,” she starts and I immediately know what’s coming. Shit. “I don’t know what to say. I’m disappointed and I’m hurt. I never in a million years thought you would use drugs.
Like
your dad said, we knew something was wrong but we didn’t know what. I knew you weren’t taking your medication but I didn’t know why. All I knew is that there was something very, very wrong and you wouldn’t talk to us. I miss you and want to see you. I want you to come to the house like you used to and not just send Andy to spend the night when you want to go out doing whatever you feel like doing.” Her voice is starting to break, adding to her suppressed anger. “I don’t think you know how much you’ve hurt me. I guess I was a bad mother. Look at how both my kids turned out.” I close my eyes.
My mother, the martyr.

My parents leave and I go outside to smoke. I’m angry. I’m livid. “What a bunch of bullshit!” I say to Betsy as she joins me.

“What?”

“All that
God
damn shit my dad was saying about how he felt so sorry for all the families and especially the kids and yadda, yadda, yadda. What’d he do? Have his fucking memory erased?” I’m walking in fast, tight circles around the smoking area. “Jesus, they act like nothing ever happened.
Like they’re just shocked that other people’s lives are so sad.
What the hell? Did they forget what they were like when we were growing up? They used to take a cooler full of beer anytime we went somewhere out of the city and drink the
whole way to wherever the hell we were going.” I turn to Betsy. “The son of a bitch used to disappear for days at a time.” I know I’m yelling but I’m so furious I can’t help it.

“They seemed real nice. I know they love you a lot. You can tell how much they care about you.”

“Bullshit! I don’t give a shit what you think you saw! What the hell’s wrong with them?” I leave Betsy, who looks confused and a little scared, and go to my room. I want to break something. I want to hit something. I want to scream. I do not want to feel this way any longer. I pull out my journal and write in fast, hard strokes that bear little resemblance to my handwriting:

“I’m mad today. I’m not exactly sure why. I know my Effexor is working because, while I felt very agitated, I didn’t feel out of control during the session. I’m mad at my parents, I think, for their naiveté and for what I know they want. They want to not have to acknowledge that there’s anything wrong, because it’s all about appearances and we never talk about the ugly things and certainly not if those things are their things either partially or completely.

I don’t want to hurt them. I know this isn’t about blame or attacking. I
will not, however, continue
to pretend that the pile of elephant shit in the middle of the room isn’t there.