All Fall Down: A Novel (34 page)

Lena yanked at the strings of her hooded sweatshirt. “Whatever they said,” she began, in her low, raspy voice, “it’s a total exaggeration.”

Bernice raised an eyebrow. “How do you know ‘they’ were saying anything about you? What do you think you did wrong?”

More squirming and string-yanking. “I guess maybe I wasn’t so respectful during the AA meeting last night.”

I rolled my eyes. Lena had sat in the back row with an Ashley in her lap as the speaker detailed his rock bottom, which involved leaping from the twelfth-story balcony of his New York City apartment to a neighboring balcony because he was pretty sure his neighbor had left her door unlocked and he wanted to see if she had any goodies in her bathroom cabinet. “I didn’t even care that I could have fallen and died,” he said. “I just wanted something so bad.”

Bernice turned to me. “New girl. Allison. What are you here for?”

“Pills.” I should have saved time and just put it on my nametag.
ALLISON W.—PILLS.

“Huh. What’d you think of Miss Lena’s performance last night?”

I sighed. I didn’t want to get on Lena’s bad side. From what I’d heard, she could be vindictive. She’d let a girl drop to the art therapy room floor during trust falls after the girl had ratted out one of Lena’s friends for sneaking in loose cigarettes in her Bumpit.

“Come on,” said Bernice. “This is a program of total honesty.”

“I think Lena could have been a little more respectful.”

Lena pulled her sweatshirt hood up over her head and muttered something.

“What was that?” asked Bernice. “Share with the group, please.”

“I said you’d treat this like a joke, too, if you’d been through it five times.”

Five times. When I’d first arrived I’d been shocked to hear numbers like that. Now it just made me sad. Repeat offenders, I had learned, were the rule, not the exception. If you were an addict, there was rehab, and if rehab didn’t work, there was more rehab. Some of the rehabs were different—one girl, a Xanax addict, had been through aversion therapy, where she’d get a shock while looking at a picture of her drug of choice—but most of them were the same. They followed the Twelve Steps; they relied on a Higher Power to bring the “still sick and suffering” to sobriety; they were programs of total abstinence, which meant you could never have so much as a sip of beer or a glass of wine, even if your problem had been prescription pills or crack cocaine. If rehab didn’t work, they’d send you back again . . . and I was learning that rehab hardly ever took the first time, and that most of the women had been through the process more than once.

Bernice was staring at me, her eyes sharp behind the thick lenses of her glasses. She looked like someone they’d cast as a mom in a TV commercial, the one who’d have to be convinced that the heat-and-eat spaghetti sauce was as good as what her own mother used to make. “How’d you feel, watching Miss Lena at the meeting last night? No. Scratch that. Let’s back up. How do you feel about being here in general?”

I shrugged. “Fine, I guess.”

The group groaned . . . then, as I watched in astonishment, everyone stood and did ten jumping jacks.

“You can’t say ‘fine.’ Or ‘good,’ ” Marissa explained. “Bernie thinks they’re meaningless.”

“Tell me how you really feel,” said Bernice.

“Okay. Um. Well. I knew I needed help.” After nearly a week in here, I knew that was Rehab 101. You had to start by admitting
you had a problem, or they’d badger you and break you down, pushing and pushing until you blurted the worst thing you’d ever done in the worst moment of what they insisted you call your active addiction.

“How come?” she asked, tilting her head, watching me closely. “You get a DUI? Fail a drug test?”

“No, no, nothing like that.” I swallowed hard, knowing what was coming, as Bernice looked down at her notes.

“Says here you got in some trouble at your daughter’s school.”

“That’s right.” No point in lying. “I went to pick up my daughter and my friend’s kids at their school, and I’d had some pills. I thought I was fine—” Aubrey nudged me, whispering,
“No ‘fine’s.”
“Sorry. I thought I was okay to drive,” I amended. “I know what I can handle, when I’m okay and when I’m not—but my friend and I had been drinking, and even though I’d only had one glass . . .”

“On top of the painkillers,” Bernice said.

I nodded. “Right. Wine and painkillers. The teacher in charge of the carpool line took my keys away.”

“So you signed yourself in?”

“Um.” I swallowed hard, wondering, again, exactly what these people knew, and how much I’d told them when I’d arrived. “I—my husband and I—there was . . . I guess I’d call it kind of an intervention. He found out what I was doing, and he told me I needed to get some help, and I agreed.”

Bernice looked at my file again. “Walk us through exactly what happened before you came here.”

I cringed at the memories—the sickness of withdrawal, the doc-in-the-box, the ill-fated Suboxone, Ellie finding me in bed, sick and covered in vomit. Ellie seeing me on my hands and knees, ass in the air, face pressed into the carpet, desperate for one more crumb of Oxy.

“Allison?” Bernice was looking at me. Her expression was not unkind. “Little secret. Whatever you did, whatever you’re remembering that’s making you look like you just ate a lemon, believe me. Believe me. Someone in here’s done worse, or seen worse.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t speak. What kind of mother would let herself get so out of control, fall down so far, that her daughter would witness such a scene? I sat there, breathing, until I was able to speak again.

“My husband found out what I’d been doing. About buying the pills online,” I began. I told them about the night I’d spent awake, my laptop heating my thighs, gobbling pills one after another until they were all gone. Heads nodded as I described how frantic, how terrified, how awful I’d felt, knowing I’d come to the end of my stash, with no idea how to get more. I told them about taking a cab to the doctor’s office in the strip mall, where, as Bernice put it, “you found some quack to give you Suboxone.” Her penciled-in eyebrows ascended. “Because replacing one drug with another is a great idea and nothing could possibly go wrong there, am I right?”

I didn’t answer. I’d already figured out that Meadowcrest took a dim view of Suboxone. There were rehabs that would use other opiates to help addicts through withdrawal, but I hadn’t landed at one of them.

“So here you sit.”

“Here I sit,” I repeated, and wondered, again, what was happening at home. How was Ellie getting to sleep each night, without me to read her three books and sing her three songs, and give the ritual spritz of monster spray? How was she getting dressed, without me to make her sundresses fight? Had Sarah posted anything on Ladiesroom explaining my absence, or had she found a substitute mom-and-marriage columnist? How was
Dave managing with my mother? Was she getting to Eastwood to see my dad? Had he gotten any worse? I pictured Dave having a long lunch with his work wife, at a cozy table for two at the pub near the paper, my husband pouring out his heart as L. McIntyre listened sympathetically, nodding and making comforting noises while she mentally decorated my still-empty house, the one that would be her blank canvas once I’d been dispensed with and she’d moved in.

“What’s going on with the husband?” asked Bernice. I felt my eyes widen.
Can they read our minds?

“I think he’s got a girlfriend. When I left he had a work wife. I’m thinking she probably got a promotion. But listen,” I said, suddenly desperate to turn the focus from me to someone else, anyone else. “It’s okay. Dave’s a good dad, and he’s got my mom there to help. I’m sure everything’s—”

“No fine!”
the room chorused. I shut my mouth. Bernice’s gold bracelets glinted as she wrote in her pad.

“So are you two . . . estranged? Separated?”

“I don’t know what we are,” I admitted. “I can’t get him to talk to me. He wouldn’t do counseling.”

“Did he know about the drugs?” asked Bernice.

I shook my head automatically before I remembered the envelope he’d intercepted; the receipts he’d brandished, the toneless recital in front of the girl in the cubicle the day I’d arrived, with Dave giving dismayingly accurate estimates of how much and how long. “He knew.” I wiped my eyes. I’d cried more in less than a week in rehab than I had in the previous ten years of my life, and it wasn’t like I had a particularly gut-wrenching story to weep over. “I don’t know. We used to be in love, and then we had Ellie, and it was like we turned into just two people running a day care. He was the one who wanted us to live in the suburbs. He went out there and bought a house without my even seeing
it. He was going to write a book, so he had this chunk of money. Then the book contract got canceled, and I started earning more, so I was the one picking up the slack there, but it was never part of the plan, you know? The plan was, I’d stay home with the baby, he’d be the breadwinner. Only he wasn’t winning a ton of bread, and my daughter turned out to be kind of hard to deal with sometimes, and now I just feel so unhappy . . .” I buried my face in my hands. “I don’t understand it. I have everything I want, everything I was supposed to want, so why am I so sad?”

“So you used.” the counselor’s voice was gentle.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“And did it work?”

I nodded, still with my face buried in my hands. “For a while, it felt good. It smoothed out all the rough edges. It made me feel like I could get through my days. But then I was doing so much of it, and spending so much on it, and worrying all the time about where I was going to get more. And I could have hurt my daughter.” I lifted my head. My nose was running; my eyes felt red and raw. I looked at Bernice, her calm face, her kind eyes.

“Allison,” she told me, “you can do this. You are going to be okay.”

“Really?” I sniffled.

“Really really. If you want it. If you’ll do the work. It’ll probably be the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life. But people do come back. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t see it. I wouldn’t be doing this work if I didn’t see miracles every day.”

I tasted the word “miracle.” More God stuff. But whatever. Just waking up every morning and thinking that my life would be all right without pills, that I could manage work and my parents and Ellie . . . that would be enough.

“Allison W.?” A khaki-bot teenager stood in the doorway. “Michelle wants to see you.”

“Go on,” said Bernice.

“See you tomorrow?” I asked hopefully.

She shook her head. “I was gonna wait until the end of group to tell y’all, but today’s my last day here.”

Unhappy murmurs rippled through the circle. I sank back in my seat, stunned and angry. I finally had a therapist, a therapist I liked, and she was leaving after my first session? “Where are you going?” asked Shannon.

“I’ll be doing outpatient, over in Cherry Hill.” She smiled. “So I might see some of you on the other side.”

“Wait,” I protested. “You can’t leave! I just got here!”

She gave me another smile, although this one seemed more professional than kind. Of course she couldn’t let herself get attached to women she would know for only four weeks, or, in my case, forty-five minutes. “I’m sure they’ll find someone great to replace me.”

There didn’t seem to be time to discuss it. So I shuffled down the hallway behind the recovery coach, yawning enormously. The night before, I’d dropped off at ten and woken up just after midnight, wide-awake and drenched in sweat. I’d taken a shower, put on fresh clothes, and put myself back to bed, trying to get some more sleep, but it hadn’t happened. My thoughts chased one another until I was so frantic and sad that I was sobbing into my pillow, thinking about getting divorced, and what it would do to Ellie, and what single motherhood would do to me. “Can’t you give me Ambien?” I’d asked the desk drone after four hours of that misery. “I have a prescription.”

“Ambien? In here?” the RC on duty, the one everyone called Ninja Noreen for her habit of sneaking into bedrooms and shining her flashlight directly into their eyes during the hourly bed checks, actually snorted at the thought.

“Okay, then something that’s approved for in here.”

“Most alcoholics and opiate users have disrupted sleep. We don’t believe in sleep aids. You’re going to just have to ride this out. Eventually, your body’s clock will reset itself.” They gave me melatonin, a natural sleep aid, which didn’t do a thing, and a CD of ocean sounds to listen to, which was just as ineffective. I was starting to feel like I was going crazy . . . and nobody seemed to care.
Dear Ellie,
I would write in the middle of another sleepless night, with my notebook on my lap and a towel next to me to wipe away the sweat and the inevitable tears.
I miss you so much. I can’t wait to see you. Are you making lots of treats with Grandma? Are you playing lots of Monopoly and Sorry?
I would write to her about baking and board games, telling her, over and over, that I missed her and I loved her, all the while wondering how this had happened, trying to find an answer to the only question that mattered:
How does a suburban lady who’s pushing middle age end up in rehab? How did this happen to me?

“I
understand you have a television appearance scheduled for Thursday?” Michelle began.

“That’s right.” I’d made an appointment with Michelle to discuss a visit to
Newsmakers on Nine,
even though I was was half hoping she would tell me I couldn’t do it. I felt so exhausted and on edge that I wasn’t sure I’d make any sense on the air. I also looked lousy. My skin was pale, my face felt drawn, my lips, even my eyelids, were chapped and peeling, and there were huge dark circles under my eyes and a good inch of dark roots showing at the crown of my dyed-and-highlighted head. If I’d harbored thoughts of emerging from rehab tanned and rested and ready to take on the world, those notions had quickly been dispelled. I wouldn’t be all right in twenty-eight days, or six months, or even a year. On my last day of orientation they’d shown us a video called
The Brain Disease of Addiction,
from which I’d learned that I could look forward to a year to eighteen months of no sleep and mood swings and depression and generally feeling awful. How could I live through that? I was sure the video wasn’t meant to discourage, but I was also sure I wasn’t the only woman who came out of it thinking,
Eighteen months? That won’t be happening. Sobriety’s not for me.