Even before I’d finished saying “birthday party,” Michelle was shaking her head.
“I’m sorry, Allison, but the rules are, you need to have had at least six sessions with your counselor before you’re eligible for a day pass. By this Saturday, you’ll only have had three.”
“But that’s not my fault! You guys didn’t even assign me a counselor until I’d been here almost a week!”
Michelle pursed her lips into a simper. “As you know, Allison, we’ve been having some staffing issues.”
“Then don’t you think you need to adjust the rules to reflect that? You can’t require someone to have a certain number of sessions, and then have so few counselors on staff that it’s impossible to hit that number. And I’ve done everything else!” My hands were shaking as I fumbled for the evidence. “Look, here’s my time line of addiction.” I pulled it out of my binder and brandished it in her face. Michelle gave it a skeptical look.
“That’s it, Allison? Just one page?”
“I didn’t use anything until I was in my thirties. Sorry. Late bloomer. But look . . .” I pointed at the page. “I’ve attended every Share and all the in-house AA meetings since I’ve been here. I went to a guest lecture on Sunday, and I’m volunteering in the soup kitchen on Wednesday.” And wouldn’t that be fun. “Listen,” I said, realizing that my speeches were getting me nowhere. “It’s my daughter. She’s turning six. She isn’t going to understand why I can’t be there.”
“Children are more resilient than we give them credit for. I bet your daughter will surprise you.” Michelle looked pleased when she’d shot down my TV appearance. Now she looked positively delighted, as if she could barely contain her glee. I could imagine my hands wrapping around her flabby neck, my fingers sinking into the folds of flesh as I squeezed. I made myself stop, and take a breath, and refocus.
“Michelle. Please. I’m asking you as a mother. As a fellow human being. Please don’t punish my daughter because I’m an addict. Please let me go to her party.”
“The rules are the rules, Allison, and you didn’t do what you needed to in order to get your pass.”
“But you didn’t give me a chance! Aren’t you listening to me? Because of your staffing issues there was absolutely no way I could have met your requirements.”
“I understand that I’m hearing your disease talking. I’m hearing it say, ‘I want what I want, and I want it right now.’ Which is how addicts live their lives. Everything has to be now, now, now.” I was shaking my head, trying to protest, but Michelle kept talking. “We think there’s always going to be someone there to clean up our messes, cover for us, call the boss or the professor, make excuses.”
“I never asked anyone to cover for me. I cleaned up my own messes. I never . . .” Oh, this was impossible. Didn’t she understand that I wasn’t one of those addicts who slept all day and got high all night? Didn’t she realize that, far from making my life unmanageable, the pills were the only thing that gave me even a prayer of a shot at managing?
Michelle kept talking. “In sobriety, we don’t make excuses, and we don’t make other people cover for us. We live life on life’s terms. We take responsibility for our own actions, and our own failures. This was your failure, Allison, and you need to own it.”
Tears were spilling down my cheeks. I’d heard the phrase “seeing red” all my life but never known it was a thing that really happened. As I sat there, a red shadow had descended over my world. My heart thumped in my ears, as loud as one of those person-sized drums you see in marching bands. It took everything I had not to lunge across the desk and hit her.
“I am going to my daughter’s party. I told her I’d be there, and I’m going.”
“Allison—”
“No. We’re done chatting. We’re through.”
Still shaking with rage, I got up, closed the door, went back to my room, and lay on my bed. Okay, I told myself. Think. Maybe I could sneak out the night before the party, climb out of my bedroom window and start walking. Only where? I wasn’t sure where I was, how far away from Philadelphia, whether there were buses or trains. Even if I waited until daylight, I wouldn’t know where to go, or even how long it would take to get there.
I rolled from side to side and wondered what Ellie was doing. When we’d bought the Haverford house, we’d made only one improvement: in Ellie’s room, instead of the standard double-hung windows, I’d had the contractor install a deep, cushioned window seat with built-in bookshelves on either side. It had turned out even better than I’d hoped. The cushions were detachable, and the lid of the seat lifted up for storage. Since Ellie had been too little to read, we’d repurposed the seat as a stage, hanging gold-tassled curtains that Ellie could open with a flourish, building a ticket box out of a shoebox and construction paper and glitter. At night, Ellie’s collection of Beanie Babies and stuffed bears would perform a Broadway revue, singing everything from expurgated selections from The Book of Mormon and Urinetown to Bye Bye Birdie and The Sound of Music . . .