Ninety Days (9 page)

And he does. Though I’d like to think my tear-streaked speech in the kitchen is what pushed him to make the right decision, I learn later from his mother that she and Lotto’s father threatened—convincingly this time—to throw him out, cut him off entirely, and let him fend for himself if he didn’t go, and stay, for a whole year. He texts me the next morning:
Going to Cali. Wish me luck, brother.

The next night, I relapse. Polly is still in rehab, Lotto will be tucked away in his eleventh or twelfth rehab in Napa Valley, and I’ll be coming home from the Meeting House, thinking about Noah, work, money, all the things Jack has counseled me to stop thinking and worrying and grieving about. And then I think about getting high. I think about it and then I do it. It’s after midnight when I call Rico. I use the occasion to pay him back the thousand dollars I owe him and buy a bag of crack. I smoke it down and at two in the morning go to Mark’s. He’s there with three other people—two middle-aged guys and a kid in his early twenties. I sleep with all of them and smoke their drugs, since I have reached my ATM limit and have access to no more money.
My, my, how the mighty have fallen,
Mark cracks when he returns to his bedroom to survey the scene. And I think,
I’ve always been down here, it’s just more obvious now.

I leave Mark’s around noon, crawl into bed, blast the air-​
conditioning
, and take a fistful of Tylenol PM. Polly leaves a message from the pay phone at High Watch. She’s going to meetings all day and night, she says, and the food is good. She misses Heather and Essie and me but she’ll be home soon. Heather, who has calmed down and called Polly to say she can still live in the apartment, is renting a car and picking her up next Monday.
I’m comin’ home, Crackhead. You better be sober.

I don’t tell Polly or anyone else, including Jack, about the relapse. I keep it a secret, just like I used to with Noah. I think I’m doing it for her and not me. I think it’s some kind of sacrifice so she doesn’t begin to get the idea that staying sober is impossible. I don’t want her to think what I’m beginning to suspect: that none of what works for Jack and Asa and Luke and Annie is going to work for me. I’m like Lotto, without the wealth, without the endless safety nets of rehab after rehab. I’m like Sam and like I imagine Lotto would be if he hadn’t left for California: a goner.

First Monday in June. Polly’s two weeks in rehab are up and Heather brings her back to the city in time for the two o’clock meeting. She comes in just before it starts and sits down across from me. She looks younger, brighter. I’m so used to seeing Polly in her pajamas or in unwashed sweatpants and T-shirts that it’s jarring to see her in clean jeans and a blouse, her hair washed and skin clear. At the break, when Polly raises her hand and announces that she has seventeen days, the place goes wild. Later, when she shares about her time away, Pam and others sob and sigh with what can only be described as joy.

At the dog run afterward, Polly tells me that Heather has promised to slow down, and if she uses, not to use in the apartment. Polly seems hopeful, but I can’t help but doubt that whatever promises Heather has made she will surely break. And soon. Now that Polly has some clean days together, I look on the bright side and think maybe we’re both out of the woods, finally. I haven’t told her about my relapse and don’t plan to.

Our schedule of the 12:30, two o’clock, and dog run resumes. Jack has insisted that I take a service commitment at a meeting, so I make coffee and set up the chairs at the Meeting House on Wednesday nights. There’s another guy who shares the commitment with me—a gentle fellow in his early forties whose story is very different from mine. His story reminds me of my father’s—years of drinking and a slow, steady narrowing of a life until the loneliness causes enough agony to instigate change. For my father, it wasn’t until his mid-sixties, when he was living alone in a small house in New Hampshire, twice divorced, with children who didn’t speak to him and friends and siblings who had, one by one, gradually disappeared. What is bewildering to me is that my father didn’t get sober—instead he switched from scotch to beer—but he still went through the kind of change that I see happen in the people who do. It began, at least from what I can tell, with a young couple who lived nearby. Dad got to know the husband because he also had a small plane at the nearby landing strip. One thing leads to another, and the couple invite my dad over for dinner. Sometime soon after the dinner, the wife is diagnosed with a serious cancer and given less than a year to live. They find out that there are experimental treatments that take place in Boston and all of a sudden their lives are in chaos. Whether he offered or they asked I don’t know, but my father begins watching their dog—a poodle, of all things—while they are away. He gets very attached to the dog and it begins to stay over at his place for longer and longer stretches. As the wife becomes weak from the treatments, she is no longer able to drive herself to Boston for her frequent doctor’s appointments. The husband is a commercial airline pilot, as my dad had been, so there are many times when he is simply not available to drive her. My father steps in and begins driving. This goes on for several years until, eventually, the woman dies. I remember my father mentioning the couple and their tragic situation during one of the first conversations we have when I’m back in New York from White Plains. By this time, her death was near. I remember being baffled by and jealous of his instinctive care for these strangers, particularly since, until now, he’s had very little to do with my life or with any of my three siblings. My father and I speak two or three times a week that spring and summer, and there isn’t one time when he doesn’t mention these people or their poodle, which I think has basically become his. Before this, conversations with my father usually involved patiently listening to him complain about the president (it never matters which one), Congress, the health care industry, or an old favorite, the Kennedys. But now, most of the whipping boys have vanished. Not all, but most. In their place are detailed accounts of this woman’s decline, the toll on her husband, and the latest attempt to reverse what appears to be irreversible. And questions. About my days, how I fill them, and recent developments with Polly and Asa and Jack, all of whom I’ve described to him in detail, the first people in my life since grammar school I’ve talked about with him or even mentioned. During this time he also becomes increasingly involved with my younger siblings, whose twenties are drawing to a bumpy close. He makes sure they have insurance, lawyers for legal troubles, money for night classes. And my nephews, his grandsons—he attends every birthday in Maine, flies his small plane to recitals and sporting events even. It doesn’t happen overnight, but phone call by phone call, action by action, he becomes part of our lives, a member of the family—the father, the grandfather and friend he never was. That he still drinks, albeit far less than before, is none of my business (Jack’s phrase, not mine).

The Wednesday setting-up-the-meeting commitment takes all of twenty minutes before the meeting, and yet I bring it up in every conversation, every description about my routine, every discussion about getting sober. People who address the United Nations or perform open heart surgery no doubt talk less about what they do than I did about those twenty minutes of flipping light switches, brewing coffee, and arranging chairs once a week. After tennis in the mornings with Elliot, or at dinner with Jean at Basta Pasta, I go on and on. I even tell them about the commitments I don’t have yet. After ninety days, Jack says, I need to chair a meeting. There are ten different meetings a week at The Library—speaker meetings, topic meetings, meditation meetings, et cetera—and I wonder and worry about which one I’ll get and if I’ll be confident enough to sit in front of the group and lead. Whenever I try to talk to Jack about this stuff he cuts the conversation short with
Worry about which one when it’s time. Get ninety days, and then let’s talk about it.
So until then, it’s mostly Jean and Elliot and, amazingly, my father who I talk to about this stuff. And, of course, Polly.

Only a few days after Polly returns home, Heather starts using in the apartment again. And more people than before seem to be using with her there. Polly shares about what’s going on in meetings and talks to me about it at the dog run, but she still can’t imagine moving out. Not only does she not think she can afford to move, but also she’s worried that if she does, Heather will overdose, either accidentally or on purpose. In the last few days, when the subject of moving out comes up, Heather has threatened to kill herself if Polly leaves. It’s a strange development, since less than a month ago Heather was demanding Polly move out, but as Annie reminds me one afternoon over coffee, Heather is losing her running buddy. Polly is getting sober and Heather isn’t, and Heather’s mad. That they are twins is easy to forget. Heather is stocky whereas Polly is rail thin. Heather has a coiled, angry energy that seems as if it could spring and strike at any moment. Polly is someone who looks more likely to hurt herself than anyone or anything else. Polly has Greenpeace and PETA stickers on her knapsack. Heather has a skull tattooed on the back of her neck. I know how difficult it is getting sober on my own, but living with a using buddy—and a twin, no less—who has dealers and drug addicts in and out of the apartment is unimaginable. Polly may have talked about it, but it’s only now that I’m really beginning to recognize how tough what she’s trying to do is.
That Heather is a strong undertow,
Annie says.
It’s a good thing Polly was a champion swimmer in college.

Polly keeps sharing about Heather, keeps showing up to meetings, and continues to walk dogs in the neighborhood to cover her portion of the rent. May winds down and as it does I think,
These have been the longest two months of my life.
Not because they’ve been the hardest but because it seems that so much has happened, so many new people have come into my life, and even more have left. I’m hopeful but I’m also tired. I didn’t count on relapsing when I first came back to the city from White Plains. Didn’t count on how expensive those relapses would be. Money is tight. With the last relapse and money needed for one of the lawyers handling my settlement with Kate, I’ve wiped out what would have paid June’s rent. I’m trying to sell the only Eggleston photograph that’s of any value in a portfolio I have, but so far have had no luck. Dave’s friend, a respected art dealer, is doing her best—as a favor to Dave—to unload at least that one, but there have been no bites. On the bright side, an envelope arrives with a preapproved credit card and, on a lark, I send back the papers with a signature and a few weeks later a credit card appears with a $17,000 line of credit. From a cash advance that I get with this card I pay the June rent. It takes a number of visits to the ATM to advance that much cash from the credit card, and when I finally have $2,500 I deposit the money in my checking account and write a check to the landlord.
One more month of shelter,
I think, as I drop the envelope in the mailbox, and I’m genuinely grateful as I do.

During, in between, and after my meetings, I still think about getting high, still get cravings. I make my phone calls, share at The Library about it, but still feel as if I’m a sitting duck. Less than two weeks after my last relapse, I pick up again. It’s like all the other times. A memory of getting high, a sudden craving, the world narrowing to one desire. I can’t remember much about that day, the events or thoughts preceding the phone call to Happy. I remember using alone and then not alone. Someone I don’t know materializes, the way these people, these people precisely like me, always do. We run out. It’s nine in the morning. He says he has a connection uptown. I give him two hundred dollars, he leaves and doesn’t return. It’s a long, grim day and I scrape the stems and screens that I have, smoke them until they resemble charcoal, and eventually give up. There are a few beers left in the refrigerator. I drink one down, take a few Tylenol PMs, and lie in bed and wait until Happy or Rico turns his phone on. There is no doubt in my mind that I will call to get more. I can get a few hundred dollars from the credit card I advanced the rent money from. It’s mid-afternoon and the sun is pulsing on the other side of the drawn blinds. The old sheet nailed to the wall above the terrace door flaps with the air gushing from the wheezing air conditioner.

I wait, fall asleep for a little while, wake up at seven or eight, and even though I know the dealers are open for business again, I don’t call them. Later, I think. I’m exhausted. There’s a phrase I hear in the rooms all the time—
Sick and tired of being sick and tired
—and it couldn’t diagnose more acutely how I feel. I go out to the terrace, look down to 15th Street, and again think about jumping.
Why do I always want to die?
I think impatiently. I always have, as long as I can remember, and never as much as when I’m coming down from a high, nearing the ruin of consequences that wait. It’s so predictable, so selfish, and so weak. I go back inside and down the last beer—an Amstel Light, of all things. It doesn’t feel like an end but it will be. Perhaps not
the
end, but
an
end.

I sleep through the night without waking and begin the day as I’ve done most days since April. I go to the gym, get to the 12:30 meeting early, raise my hand, and count one day for the last time. I don’t remember who is there that day, but I do remember staying for the two o’clock and, after, going to the dog run with Polly. The dogs race in circles, hump each other, bark. The guys in the tracksuits make their phone calls and we sit in the middle of it all, me with one day and she with over three weeks.
Look who’s on top now, Crackhead,
she teases, and I laugh, for what feels like the very first time.

Later in the summer, a month after Polly is back from rehab, The Library closes for a day. It’s a Monday and the closing is either for a holiday or for a renovation of some kind. Polly and I agree to meet at Dean & Deluca at noon for a coffee and then walk east to a meeting at one o’clock. Walking up University I can see Polly sitting on a stool in the window. Before I get to the door I know something’s wrong. There is the angle of her slouch, her hair falling in her face, and the surest sign of all: her pajamas.
Motherfucker,
I say or think and rush inside.
Motherfuckingmotherfucker!
I shout as I get closer and see for sure that she’s a wreck, that she’s been using.
Are you kidding me?
I ask as I approach her on the stool. Usually when Polly relapses I react in the way she usually reacts with me—with disappointment, fear, even, but always with compassion, and always quick with a plan to get to a meeting.

This time I’m furious. But not as furious as I am when she says,
I’m giving up. Sobriety isn’t for me. I had a long talk with Heather this morning and it’s what I decided.
I cannot believe what I’m hearing.
HEATHER?!!??
I bellow.
Are you kidding? You’re now taking advice from Heather?
She just looks at me. It’s not a conversation. She’s barely in front of me now. She’s already back in the apartment. Of course she looks terrible, of course she hasn’t slept all night. But what she’s saying is not part of the script. She’s supposed to get back on the horse, go to a meeting with me right away, and announce that she has one day.
I’m done,
she says, more matter-of-fact than defiant.
I’m sorry, but I’m done.
I don’t know what to say. We sit in the window and stare at each other and two things cross my mind: (1) I’m jealous that when we leave she will return to an apartment just a few blocks away to drugs, and (2) I’m sure she’s going to die. Not someday, not even soon, but now, today, right after we part ways. I know she’s going to die and I know that there is nothing I can do about it. She’s not as strong as Heather is, not as tough, can’t do the kinds of drugs she does. Do I call the police to raid Heather’s apartment? Is it better for her to be in jail than to be dead? What if Noah had done that with me? I’d be in jail now. But am I now so much better off? If I’d gone to jail I’d probably have a lot more than a few weeks sober by now. And then, right there, before I say another word, I pray. Jack is always telling me to pray and when I balk he usually just says,
Whatever you’re doing isn’t working, so you might as well try.
So now, for Polly, I do. To whom or to what I don’t know, but to something:
Tell me what to say. Tell me what to say so she doesn’t die. Please.
But no words come and I eventually say what my friend Lili said to me months ago after she found me deep in a bender at One Fifth:
You want to die, die. You want to live, call me. But until then, leave me out of it.
And just as I say these same words, Polly’s up off the stool, out the door, and back on the street. She’s gone. Just like that.