The Falls (5 page)

“I recognize our good friend Jerry.”

A man stood up. “Thanks, Frank. I wanted to remind people that there are still spots available on our bus trip to the annual general meeting in Cleveland in July.”

“Are there many spaces?” Frank asked.

“So far, twenty-seven members have committed. We have three more places on the bus.”

“I'd like to add,” a woman standing at the back said, “that having been to three conventions I can guarantee it will be inspirational . . . and fun. I just wish I could go to this one myself.”

“Thank you for that endorsement,” Frank said. “So, anybody interested should see Jerry as soon as possible. If there are no other announcements I'm delighted to move on to the most joyful part of our evening. Would Phil and Susan please come forward.”

A couple—they looked to be in their forties or fifties— stood up and walked to the front, hand in hand, as the audience cheered.

“This is pretty special,” Frank began. “Phil and Susan, who have been married for a little less than four years, are celebrating nine months of sobriety. Here are your nine-month chips.”

The crowd roared out its approval while Frank handed first one, and then the other, a little red thing that looked like a poker chip.

“Hello, I'm Phil.”

“And I'm Susan,” his wife added.

“And we're alcoholics,” they both said together.

“Hello, Phil. Hello, Susan.”

Phil and Susan started to tell their story, about how alcohol had been their enemy and being dry had saved their lives and their marriage. People cheered, and then Phil and Susan returned to their seats. They were replaced by some people who had been sober for six months, then two months, and finally those people who had been sober for the grand total of one month.

With each speaker it was just more of the same. Different people with different names, saying the same things with slightly different words. Same song, different melody. The amazing thing was that people cheered each speaker as if they were hearing these stories for the first time. Maybe all that alcohol these people had consumed before they'd stopped drinking had impaired their short-term memory.

“I see many new faces in the audience,” Frank said. “Is there anybody who wishes to declare a desire to stop drinking?”

There was silence as people looked around, but nobody moved. Then the big biker dude was making his way up from the back of the room. He walked up the aisle hand in hand with the little old woman. At the podium she reached up and gave him a hug before retreating down the aisle, leaving him alone in front of the crowd.

There wasn't a sound as everybody waited for him to begin. He looked down at his feet. He looked like he was shaking. Finally Frank walked over and put his mouth right by the guy's ear. I wondered what he was saying. The big biker nodded along in agreement with whatever it was. Frank moved away.

The biker cleared his throat and then began. “My name is . . . my name is Cole . . . and . . . and I'm an alcoholic.”

“Hello, Cole!” the audience sang out.

“I never thought I'd be in one of these meetings,” Cole said quietly. His voice was as small as he was large, and I had to strain to hear him. “I thought AA meetings were for losers.”

Loser
—that word hit me in the side of the head.

“And maybe I
am
a loser,” he continued. “I lost everything.” He started shaking more and there was a catch in his voice. “Last night I got drunk . . . again. This time was different, though. I got drunk so I wouldn't feel the bullet. I wasn't gonna wake up with no hangover . . . I was gonna wake up dead. I didn't think anybody would care.”

“I care!” called out a man.

“We all care!” a woman agreed.

“And when I did wake up, I realized . . . I realized . . . that I
was
killing myself. Maybe not with a gun . . . but
with the bottle . . . and I decided I needed help . . . that I wasn't strong enough to get better on my own.”

“None of us are!” called up a voice.

“You're not alone!” said another voice.

The man started crying—not just a few little tears crying, but big, projectile tears, sobbing, shaking, crying.

I felt a wave of anxiousness. It was like I was seeing something that I shouldn't be seeing, witnessing something too private and personal. I felt like I was looking into the window of somebody's house . . . no, worse . . . I was looking inside
him
.

Suddenly people materialized all around the biker and he was escorted away from the podium and enveloped in a group hug.

Frank returned to the podium. “Our new friend, Cole, has expressed his wish to stop drinking, and he will be given a desire chip and the support to help make that desire a reality. Cole has already admitted that he is powerless over alcohol . . . he is part of the way along the Twelve Steps. Thank you for giving testimony.” Frank paused and took a big drink, draining his glass. “And now something I've been looking forward to all night. A special time. Not only for the person it involves, but for the inspiration it offers to the rest of us gathered here. Could Leanne and her sponsor, Sarah, please come forward.”

My mother and Mrs. Bayliss stood up. As my mother passed by she reached down and gave my hand a little squeeze. They made their way to the front accompanied by a chorus of cheers and shouts and hugs and handshakes. I sank even further into my seat. This was all embarrassing.

“Hello, my name is Sarah, and I'm an alcoholic,” Mrs. Bayliss began. “I know most of the people here, and you know my story, so I'll try to keep it short.”

I didn't know her story, but I couldn't imagine it was much different from anybody else's story. I was just grateful for the keeping it short part.

“Growing up, I always tried to make people happy, to do the right thing, to do my best. But no matter how well I did, I never felt it was good enough. Even when I won I didn't win by enough. Even when I did better than other people it wasn't enough. I was empty inside, and no amount of success could fill that emptiness. I thought if I moved, my life would be better someplace else, but it wasn't. So I moved again, and it was no better. Wherever I was, it was part of me. That emptiness. And I turned to alcohol to try and fill that hole that wouldn't let me be complete.

“At first I drank just a little. It filled the void, and eased my nerves, and quieted that little voice in my head that said I wasn't good enough. And then the little became a little more.”

I looked at my watch. So much for keeping it short. So much for me getting out of here on time. And all this talk about drinking was making me antsy . . . nothing a drink or two wouldn't solve, but what if all the beer was gone when I got there?

“And I kept drinking. One drink was too much and ten drinks weren't enough. But I told myself I didn't have a drinking problem.”

“Nobody thinks they do,” somebody said, and other people yelled out in agreement.

“How could I have a drinking problem?” she asked. “I had never been arrested, or fired from a job. I was a teacher, and I went to school every day. Of course, that didn't stop me from being drunk the entire summer.” She paused. “It was amazing how fast summer holidays could go when you were drunk as a skunk for eight weeks.”

There was a roar of laughter from the audience.

“Then I came home from school one day to find my husband had left me. His note said he couldn't handle the drinking. What did he know? And then I was at school and fell down flat on my face in the cafeteria. I told them I had the flu and wasn't feeling well. I just hoped nobody could smell the ‘flu' that I'd caught out of a gin bottle. And when the principal offered to have somebody drive me home, I said I'd be fine. That's when the accident happened.”

Suddenly the quiet in the room got even quieter. There wasn't a sound. Not coughing, or people shuffling in their seats, or even a chair moving. It was like every person in the room was holding their breath. I sat up in my seat and leaned forward. Maybe she'd told this story before, but
I'd
never heard it.

“I almost killed two people that day. A young girl and myself. She lived, and I was reborn, because that was the last time I drank.”

There was a round of applause.

“Now I'd like to talk about something very special. This day marks the five-year anniversary of sobriety for one of our members . . . one of our friends . . . one of our family. I'd like you all to give a round of applause for Leanne.”

People started cheering and hooting and whistling. I clapped my hands.

“Hello, my name is Leanne, and I'm an alcoholic,” my mother said, and the whole audience—including me this time—said hello back.

“Five years. It's hard to believe. If you'd asked me back then if I'd be here tonight I would have said no. That first day, I didn't know if I could make it to a second. But I kept going, one day at a time.” She reached into her pocket and pulled something out. “I'm not so good at math so I figured it out, right here,” she said, holding up a small piece of paper for everybody to see. “There have been one thousand, eight hundred, and twenty-six one-day-at-a-times . . . that's how many days there are in five years when one of those years is a leap year.”

People chuckled.

“And there are some reasons why I've been sober all that time and why I hope I'll wake up sober tomorrow morning. There's been my sponsor . . . my good friend, Sarah.”

My mother started clapping and the audience joined in. Mrs. Bayliss looked down at the ground, embarrassed but happy. I once heard that embarrassment is just happiness trying to leak out.

“And all of my friends—my family—here at AA who have helped me understand so much and who support me each and every day. And finally, there is my son. Could you please stand up, Jay?”

I felt a hot rush throughout my entire body.

“Don't be shy,” she said. “Could you please come up here?”

Slowly I rose to my feet, aware that every eye in the whole room was now on me. If I'd known she was going to do that there's no way in the world I would have agreed to come tonight. Carefully I side-shuffled along the row of seats to reach the aisle. Head down, I walked to the front until I was standing at my mother's side.

“Jay,” she said, “thanks for standing by me and for giving me the reason to join AA to begin with.”

She wrapped her arms around me and started crying. I felt so stupid, standing in front of this roomful of people, her crying and holding on to me. Worst of all, I thought I might start crying as well.

“And what would an anniversary be without a celebration?” Frank announced.
“Happy birth-daaay toooo you,”
he started to sing, and everybody joined in as two women, holding a big cake with five candles on top, walked up the aisle. My mother stopped hugging me but still held on to one hand. If she hadn't been holding that hand I would have scrambled away.

The women stopped right in front of my mother just as the song ended. My mother took a big breath and blew out the candles, and there was another round of applause. Didn't these people ever get tired of cheering?

“I'd like to invite everybody to stay after our meeting for coffee and a piece of cake,” Frank announced. He turned to my mother. “Could you lead us in our closing prayer?”

Everybody stood and bowed their heads.

“Our Father who art in Heaven,” my mother started, and everybody joined in.

It was about the only prayer I knew. I bowed my head as well. “Hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven . . .”

 

 

 

 

“Y
OU MUST BE SO PROUD
of your mother,” the woman said as she reached the front of the line. I nodded and handed her a piece of cake. She picked up a plastic spoon off the table.

I was part of an assembly line. My mother cut her “birthday cake”—that's what they called it at AA because she was “reborn” the day she stopped drinking. Then she handed it to Mrs. Bayliss to put on a paper plate, who passed it on to me to hand out to the people waiting in line. Luckily it was a big cake because there were a lot of people, and a couple had already come back for seconds.

Standing there, giving everybody cake, I had no choice but to talk to people. Just a few words, but everybody wanted to talk. These AA people were just about the friendliest people in the world. And as I listened and nodded my head and mumbled back a few words, I watched.

It was the strangest collection of people you'd ever want to see. With most sorts of groups the people would all look kind of the same. Maybe they'd be the same age, or all male or female, or all white or black, or maybe they'd all dress in golf clothes. There was usually something that you could see that they had in common. It wasn't like that with these AA people. Male and female,
every age from about twenty to senior citizens, suits and track pants and shorts and skirts and leather pants, white, black, brown, and Asian, businessmen and bikers and bums who looked like they'd slept on the street. I figured alcoholism didn't discriminate.

A couple of times I was positive I could smell alcohol on somebody's breath as they leaned close to talk. I guess for some “one day at a time” started tomorrow, or skipped a day here and there.

Almost without exception each person took their piece of cake and proceeded through the big, open double doors leading to the courtyard. I could see people out there, sitting, eating, and talking. And, of course, smoking. Not everybody smoked but it was amazing just how many of them did. It was like they were thinking that since their liver wasn't going to kill them now they might as well go to the next available organ and burn out their lungs. For some of them I figured it was time to stop coming to so many AA meetings and start trying to find a Smokenders group instead.