“Yes . . . no, I don’t know who I need to speak with . . . I thought my wife had a day pass, but now she’s telling me she didn’t . . . Allison W. . . . Yes, I’ll hold.”
While he was holding, I went back into the Hanks’ house. Ellie was engrossed in a game of Wii bowling. “I’ll be home soon,” I whispered. She barely spared me a hug. Mrs. Hank—Danielle—was in the kitchen. “Thanks for taking her,” I said. “I wonder if you could be extra nice to her for the next little while . . .”
“Are you going away again?” Danielle asked. She wasn’t my friend, but, at that moment, I wished she was.
“Yes. I actually . . .” I’m going back to rehab, I almost said. It was right there, the words lined up all in a row, but I wasn’t sure if that was oversharing, or asking for sympathy where I didn’t deserve any. “A work thing,” I finally concluded.
“Well, don’t worry. Your mother’s a rock star. And Ellie is always welcome here.”
I thanked her. Dave was already behind the wheel when I got back outside. “Are they letting me come back?” I whispered.
He backed out of the driveway. “At first someone named Michelle wanted me to call a facility in Mississippi that treats dual-diagnosis patients. That’s when you’re an addict with mental illness.”
I gave a mirthless giggle. “Does Michelle know I’m Jewish? I might be crazy, but there’s no way I’m going to Mississippi.”
“Eventually, they said you could come back. No guarantees about staying. Someone named Nicholas is going to be waiting for you.”
Nicholas. I shut my eyes. Then I made myself open them again. “Do you want to talk about . . . anything?”
I could see his knuckles, tight on the wheel, the jut of his jaw as he ground his back teeth. “Honestly? Right now, no. I don’t.” We drove for a minute, me sitting there clutching my purse handles hard, Dave’s face set, until he burst out, “When are you going to stop lying?”
“Now,” I said immediately. “I’m done with . . . with that. With all of it. I don’t want to be that kind of person. Or that kind of mom, or that kind of wife.”
Dave said nothing. I didn’t expect a response. I’d been honest, but, of course, what else would a liar say, except I’m done with lying and I’m done with using and I don’t want to be that way anymore? It was classic I-got-busted talk . . . and part of accepting life on life’s terms, the way they told us we had to, meant living with the knowledge that maybe he’d never be able to trust me again.
I sat in silence, the way I had during my first trip to Meadowcrest. Dave pulled up in front of the main building and sat there, the car in park, the engine still running. I’d had half an hour to think of what to say, but all I could manage was “Thank you for the ride.” I got out of the car, walked past the nice-desk receptionist, back beyond the RESIDENTS ONLY PAST THIS POINT sign, to the shabby hallway with its smell of cafeteria food and disinfectant. I left my purse in my empty bedroom, looped my nametag around my neck, and took the women’s path to Nicholas’s office, where, as promised, he was waiting for me.
“Allison W.,” he said. His voice was so kind.
I sat in front of his desk and bent my head. Then I said the words I’d already said, in Group and Share and the AA meetings, where I’d sat off to the side and scribbled lyrics in my notebook. “I think I’m really in trouble,” I whispered. “I think I’m an addict. I need help.”
“Okay,” he said. His hand on my shoulder was gentle. “The good news is, you’ve come to the right place.”
PART FOUR
The Promises
TWENTY-EIGHT
“How about these clementines?” The clerk at the Whole Foods on South Street—a white guy of maybe twenty with mild blue eyes, a wide, untroubled brow, and dreadlocks down to his waist—gave me a gentle, Namaste kind of smile. He spoke softly and slowly, with great deliberation. It was maddening. This guy wouldn’t have lasted a day in the suburbs, but in Center City, where the Whole Foods was next to a yoga studio, infuriating slowness was the rule. “Should we leave them in the box? Or take them out of the box and put the fruit in a bag?”
“Fruit in a bag, please.” I was only buying a dozen things—a turkey breast to grill for dinner, the miniature oranges that Ellie loved in her school lunches, a twenty-dollar maple-scented candle that was way too expensive but that I’d found impossible to resist—but I could already tell that I was going to be checking out for a while. Use it as a chance to practice patience, Bernice’s voice said in my head. When I’d left Meadowcrest, I’d joined Bernice’s outpatient group, and her voice had taken up residence in my brain. I tried not to sigh, and actually managed a smile as the clerk first rummaged in his drawer, then patted down his pockets, and finally called over a manager, who called over a second manager, who located a pair of scissors to snip through the netting.