All Fall Down: A Novel (35 page)

“Well, Allison, the team’s been discussing it, and here is what we can offer.” Michelle picked up a pen between two pudgy fingers. “Being out on your own would most likely be too stressful for you at this stage of your recovery.” I felt myself exhale. “However, we can have a sober coach accompany you to the program.”

I held up my hand. “Excuse me? A sober coach?” I thought those were jokes, invented by the tabloids and stand-up comedians.

She nodded. “Someone who can make sure there’s no opportunity for a slip.”

“Who would this sober coach be? And what kind of training would a sober coach have?”

Michelle’s jowls flushed. “Obviously, Allison, we would send you with someone who has a lot of good clean time under her belt.”

“But not a therapist,” I surmised. “Look, some of the RCs are terrific, but some of them might as well be stocking shelves at Wawa for all they care. And none of them have degrees. In anything.”

Michelle plowed on. “We can arrange transportation to the show and have a sober coach accompany you and then bring you back here.”

“Would this cost anything extra?” I knew, from hearing other girls talk, that Meadowcrest cost a thousand dollars a day, and anything extra, from a thirty-minute massage to a family session, cost extra.

“The cost would come to . . .” She scanned the sheet of paper. “Three thousand dollars.”

I stared at her, too shocked to laugh. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“There’s no need for profanity,” Michelle said primly.

“Three thousand fucking dollars? Yes, there fucking is!”

Michelle gave me a smile as fake as a porn star’s chest. “Why don’t you think about it, Allison?”

I sighed. “I’ll need to call my editor to cancel.”

“Are you eligible for phone passes?”

I had no idea. “Of course I am.”

Michelle scribbled out a pass.

“Just so you know,” I said, “my daughter’s birthday party is on Saturday. I am going to be there.”

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
 . . .

I sat up straight, remembering
The Sound of Music.
Hadn’t that musical featured a talent show—a show within a show—and hadn’t the von Trapps used the show as cover when they made their escape?

There were talent shows in rehab. I knew that from the Sandra-Bullock-gets-sober film,
28 Days,
which they’d shown us. Could that be the answer? Suggest a show, come up with an act, convince Dave that I’d gotten a day pass . . . well. I’d figure out the specifics later, but for now, I could at least see a glimmer of possibility.

T
he next day at breakfast, I brought it up, as casually as I could. “You guys all know
The Sound of Music,
right?”

Blank looks from around the table. “Is it like
American Idol
?” ventured one of the Ashleys.

“No. Well, actually, you know what? There is a talent competition. See, there’s this big family, and the mother has died, so the father hires a governess.”

The Ashley made a face. “You can’t hire a governess. They have to be elected.”

“No, no, not a governor. A governess. It’s a fancy way of saying babysitter. So anyhow, she takes care of the kids, and the father starts to fall in love with her . . .”

Aubrey immediately launched into a pornographic soundtrack, thrusting her hips as she sang, “Bow chicka bow-wow . . .”

“Cut it out!” I said sternly. “This is a classic!” I remembered Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews dancing on the veranda, his arms around her tiny waist, her eyes gazing up at him like he was the God she’d failed to find in the convent. “So they fall in love, and the kids, who’ve never gotten more than ten minutes of their father’s time, start to straighten up and fly right.
There’s, like, six kids, and one of them’s a sixteen-year-old, and she’s in love with the messenger boy . . .”

“The messenger boy!” Lena snickered. “She needs a man with a real job.” She shook her head. “Ridin’ around on his bus pass, probably. Fuck that shit.”

“Anyhow. The Nazis organize this big talent show, and the Von Trapp Family Singers enter . . .”

“Wait, wait. That’s their name? That’s a terrible name.”

“Well, this was a long time ago,” I said. “Cut them some slack. So who’s into it?”

I looked around the circle. The Ashley was peeling strips of pink polish off of her fingernails. Aubrey was scribbling in her notebook—probably a list of everything she intended to do when they let her go. We all had versions of that list. The women my age wrote about the luxuries we missed, the foods we wanted to eat, the clothes we’d neglected to pack, taking a shower in which the water would not emerge in a lukewarm trickle, reading books where every single story did not involve an identical arc of despair and recovery, or watching made-for-TV movies that did not involve some C-list actor in the grip of either DTs or a divine revelation. The young girls, as far as I could tell, all wanted drugs and sex, typically in that order, often from the same person.

I sat up straight and breathed in from my diaphragm, trying to remember back to high-school choir. “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens . . . Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens . . . Brown paper packages tied up with strings . . .”

“These are a few of my favorite things!” sang Shannon. She was looking better than she had during Share. Her skin didn’t look as dull, and her hair was shiny. “I used to watch it with my parents. It’s cute!”

“It’s corny,” said Lena.

“But we could change it!” I said. “Like . . .” I thought for a minute. “Dealers on corners and elbows with track marks. Cop cars and dive bars and—”

“Blow jobs in state parks,” said Mary, who immediately clapped her hands over her mouth and giggled.

“Silver-white Beamers, got repo’d last spring. These are a few of my favorite things!” I sang. “When the dog bites! When the cops call! When I’m feeling sad . . . I simply remember my favorite pills, and then I won’t feel so bad.”

Everyone applauded. Mary frowned. “Do you think it glamorizes drug use?”

“Maybe we should do a song about how bad it is,” Shannon offered. “Like, do you guys know
Avenue Q
? There’s this song called ‘Mix Tape.’ ” She straightened her shoulders and began to sing in a low, pleasant alto. “ ‘He likes me. I think he likes me. But does he like me, like me, like I like him? Will we be friends, or something more? I think he’s interested, but I’m not sure . . .’ ”

She thought for a minute, and then sang, “Piss test. Just failed my piss test. I didn’t know I’d have one . . . but then I did! And I smoked crack. And had some beers. And now I’m sitting here . . . all full of fear!”

Lena’s nose wrinkled. “I dunno. Does everything have to be, like, a musical? What about a Beyoncé video?”

“Sure,” I said, even though my knowledge of Beyoncé videos was limited to the one where she pranced around in a leotard and waved her hand to flash her ring.

“And what about the girls who can’t sing?” asked Mary.

“We could do skits. Like a parody of
Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?
”

Aubrey looked impressed. “You know that show?”

I frowned. “Dude. I’m old, not dead.” I forked my fingers, fake-gangsta-style. “I’m A-Dub, bitch!”

“I’m ancient,” said Mary, who did not sound upset, as she began to sing. “Gonna take a sentimental gurney . . . Gonna set my heart at ease . . . Gonna ride that gurney down to detox . . . Hope they don’t have bedbugs or fleas . . .”

“Oh, my God, we need to do one about Ed McGreavey!” I said as I joined in the other girls’ applause. “Do you guys know
Les Miz
?”

“It’s about French revolutionaries,” said Shannon. “And there’s a love triangle . . .”

“And this horrible innkeeper, who puts cat meat in the stew, and overcharges for everything, and steals from the patrons.”

“Does he have fake hair?” asked the Ashley.

“Probably. He’s a revolting human being who takes advantage of the needy,” said Shannon.

“That’s our boy,” said Lena, who’d spent more time with Ed than the rest of us combined.

“Master of the house!” I sang. My voice wasn’t as strong as Shannon’s, but at least I could carry a tune. “Quick to catch your eye! Never wants a passerby to pass him by. Servant to the poor! Butler to the great! Hypocrite and toady and inebriate!” I set down my pen, considering. “Wow. We don’t even really need to change it.”

“What’s an inebriate?” asked one of the girls.

“A drunk.”

“Didn’t Ed do meth?” asked Aubrey.

I shrugged, but Lena was nodding. “Oh, yeah. He came back here weighing eighty pounds and missing all his teeth. He shows a picture at the lecture.”

“Not the one about finding your purpose?” I’d seen that already, and I was certain that if a shot of Ed weighing eighty pounds and minus teeth had been on offer, I’d have remembered it.

“No, no, he does another one. It’s called ‘Finding Your Bottom,’ ” said an Ashley.

I burst out laughing. Mary was laughing, too. “What?” Lena asked.

“ ‘Finding Your Bottom’?” Aubrey asked. “My grandmother always used to say that someone was so stupid he couldn’t find his own ass with both hands and a flashlight.”