Walking on Broken Glass (21 page)

The door by my head creaked open and a new hand that reeked of cigarette smoke pushed my head into the seat. “Cool off, girl. You’re not going anywhere,” he laughed. A wave of warm beer splashed across my face, and my wet hair fell into my eyes.

The car started. Oh, dear God, please let that be Nina. Please let that be Nina.

“Janie, close the door. Close the door. Close it, now.” Nina sounded like a siren wailing underwater.

“Let go of her,” Janie screamed. I heard a solid thump. A male voice roared, spewed language as foul as the meaty hands that
held me. Hands that now slid down my body. The door by my feet slammed. My freed legs crawled up the seat.

The voice at my head yelled, “You crazy—” I reached up and dug my ragged fingernails into flesh, again and again, like raking wet sand to make trenches.

“It's gonna take more than that,” the voice growled, but his grip loosened enough for me to pummel his hands while I scuttled away. When I could, I yanked away clumps of my hair not soaked with beer.

“Let her go ’cuz I’m backing up whether you do or not. Hold on, Leah,” Nina screamed.

The stench of sweat and cigarettes released me. My jaw ached from the tightness.

I lunged for the door handle inches away from my hand.

“Wait, wait.” Janie scrambled over the front seat, tumbled into the backseat, and fell over my now outstretched body. “The door's still open.”

She reached over me. “Now, Nina.” Janie's voice scratched against the dankness in the car, “Back up. Fast. Run over every disgusting one of them if you have to.”

The door slammed closed. So did my heart.

T
hat's why we hope you learn the Serenity Prayer early, you know. For times like this.”

Cathryn leaned on the wall next to me. Handed me a stick of Wrigley's Spearmint gum. Whoosh of a memory. Rifling through my mother's purse. Bits of tobacco always dusted the bottom of the fabric liner and clung to the sticks of gum she’d tear in half and throw back into her purse.

“No, thanks. I saw a video of myself chewing gum. You would’ve thought my jaws were hinged with springs. Ugly. Haven’t touched the stuff since.”

“Hey, maybe I should suggest that to the intake counselors— videos of people drinking, using …” She elbowed me ever so slightly. Ha. Ha.

I contemplated my unpolished toenails and avoided eye contact with Cathryn. She’d see my naked sadness. “I guess Carl's not coming.” The words dropped out of my mouth like pieces of dinners I’d thrown up after too many martinis.

“You stuck to this wall or can we sit down and talk?” I followed Cathryn as she walked in the rec room and sat on the sofa. “Like the dress, by the way. Red's your color.”

When she reached over to stop my hand scratching, I smelled gardenias and vanilla. My stomach lurched.

“Did you really want him here? Or did you just not want to be the one left out?”

“Left out? Left out of what? Therapy torture? Who wouldn’t want to miss that?”

“Exactly.”

“Not what I meant.” I inspected the warmish budding pink welts on the top of my hand. “Even if I didn’t want him here, why didn’t he want to be here? He didn’t even call. What's up with that? Was this his way of punishing me? Making me look like—”

“Like what? You sound like you’ve just been stood up for prom. Whoa. That's it, isn’t it?” She reached over and swatted my knee, a smile emerging like she’d just delivered a punch line.

“Hm.” I folded my arms across my chest. “Well, since that never happened to me, I wouldn’t know. Why, was that something you have personal experience with? Maybe you should tell me.”

My meanness slapped the smile off Cathryn's face. Her mouth rippled into a smirk.

“Nice try, but you’re not going to start a fire to take the heat off yourself. You need to own this one. Carl's not being here is about you, not him.”

The roller coaster in my stomach chugged its way up my throat. I waved my hand in front of her. “Wait. Gotta …” I dashed for the bathroom, hoping the wheels would stop turning in my mouth before I retched them up.

Drunk vomiting had been welcomed. Cathartic, sober vomiting, not so much. The insides of my nose burned, and the sourness of the lasagna that recycled itself out of my stomach and into the toilet lingered on my tongue. Maybe I should have reconsidered that whole gum-chewing decision. I shuffled to the sink, latched onto the sides of it to steady myself, and dared look into the mirror.

The damp black, supposedly waterproof mascara puddled in the corners of my eyes. If only I could throw up the sadness and its emotional tug on my face. I searched for a fragment of long-ago Leah lurking in eyes shaded by doubt and confusion.
God, if you’re really there, wherever there happens to be, now what? What do I do when I don’t know what to do?

No answer.

Where was that thundering God of the Old Testament? He's the one I needed. The God of the burning bush. Not the God of screaming silence.

I turned on the faucet, cupped my hands to catch the cold water, swished it around my mouth, and spit.

The lower half of my red wrap dress bunched up into itself. I smoothed it with the palms of my hands and wished I had another reason to stay in the bathroom. My guilt over my temper tantrum blocked my way to the door.

Can’t hide in here all night. You need to apologize to Cathryn.

My lips didn’t move, but the message could not have been any clearer had the face in the mirror actually spoken the words.

Maybe God's not mute.

Maybe I needed hearing aids.

“Leah?”

I opened the door and saw Cathryn's raised fist aimed at my forehead.

“I was going to apologize, really. No need for violence,” I said.

“I was about to knock.
Really.
” She rolled her blue eyes in her best Leah imitation. “But more about that later.” She twisted her ponytail on top of her head and secured it with a pencil she pulled out of her pocket. “You have company,” she whispered and waved her left arm in the direction of the nurses’ desk.

I took a few steps forward and heard Carl's voice before I spotted him leaning against the counter talking to Matthew and another man.

Carl bent down to tie the leather laces of his deck shoes— those things were always a problem—and I almost tripped over my own feet when I saw the broadly smiling, fast-talking, hand-gesturing man who stood next to him: my father.

F
ashionably late arrivals work well for parties, not for family therapy sessions.

Even though Matthew practically oiled the hinge to slide the door open quietly, and Trey's eyebrows shifted less than a centimeter when the three of us coasted across the Berber carpet, our arrival shifted the group's emotional universe. Even a whisper can knock down a house of cards.

“Dad, this dude Paul said to the Romans not to get all eaten up with bad. He said—” A lip-pierced, gangly Doug of the future, stopped mid-sentence and scanned Carl, Dad, and me as we lowered ourselves into the only empty folding chairs in the room.

Definitely clueless as to group therapy protocol, Dad raised a hand and said, “Late plane. My son-in-law over there—” he reached around me and pointed to Carl “—had to drive like a bat to get us here. And in one piece too.” He smiled at Carl who smiled back at him. At least I had one question answered.

“Oh, and the name's Bob. I’m Leah's father.”

Random throat clearings and scattered “Hi, Bob” replies fell like dominoes falling around the circle.

Hello. And I’m his mortified daughter.
I shrugged my shoulders, mouthed “I’m sorry” to future Doug, and checked out Trey to see if he was already popping a Pez. Not yet. The rest of the group played “pass a glance.”

I didn’t need to look at Carl to know he was brushing phantom lint off his pants. He used the technique to avoid eye contact when embarrassed, appalled, and/or inappropriately amused. Carl and Dad had been friends for years, so I doubt he was surprised by his introduction. If anything, Carl, who tended to be socially paralyzed, admired my dad's unabashed friendliness. I once teased that Tom Cruise's line, “You complete me,” in the movie
Jerry McGuire
was meant for them. Though I’m sure Carl and my dad agreed with me, they were such self-proclaimed nerds, they wouldn’t dare admit it publicly.

I leaned toward Dad and whispered, “This isn’t an AA meeting.”

Uh-oh. How had I forgotten? Peter and I learned early never to kick Dad under the table to forestall his reckless storytelling. For some people it might be a story-stopper move, but not my father. He stopped only to look around the table and ask, “Who kicked me?”

“Honey,” he said and slid his arm around my shoulders and squeezed, “I know this isn’t one of
those
meetings.” I heard synchronized gasps. Designer Drug Princess crossed and recrossed her tanned and toned legs, a momentary entertainment for most of the males. Trey, however, captivated by his Blackberry, flicked his hand in one of those “Go on without me” gestures.

Dad loosened his grip around me, reclaimed his arm, and nodded in future Doug's direction. “Sorry to interrupt, son. You were saying?”

Mrs. Doug gently tugged on her son's shirtsleeve. “Go ahead, Danny. Finish what you were saying about Paul.”

“Yeah, kid.” Doug laughed, but it was Grand Canyon hollow. “Thump that Bible ya mother gave ya and give it to me straight.” Doug slouched in the chair and waited.

After that night, I truly understood the rationale behind scheduling our individual therapy appointments the day after family group.

We needed therapy to recover from therapy.

“Too bad you had to miss it. Maybe next week I can pass you off as my sister. You’d be hooting for days,” I said to Molly. She’d picked up a few LSU tees from my house so I could simultaneously be comfortable and torture Jan, a graduate of Alabama. Nothing like an SEC rivalry to spice the gumbo of rehab life.

“All that energy planning your attire and look what you’ve been reduced to.” Molly giggled as she handed me the shirts. “Promise me you won’t ask me to bring over a purple and gold LSU bikini. If Ann Taylor found out I was transporting tacky, they’d cancel my shopping privileges.”