Night Navigation Page 8

  Big hand on the ten, little hand creeping toward the twelve. Ticketytock. Almost smoke time. My girlfriends have not been dope fiends. Good chance Sammi will come for a visit. Choo-choo comes right from Grand Central. Sammi. Haven't seen her since when? The last go-round with recovery. That first year back from Portland. When Luke was only a few months old. That winter, that spring. Then holes in the body made further deception impossible. Bye, Mark; bye, Sammi. Almost two years. I loved my brother. Almost seven years. What day is it? Tuesday, March 12. I know what day it is. When did I first stick a needle in my arm? I do not have AIDS or hep C. Yet.

  Leon, one of the resident aides, is making getting-ready-to-speak moves. Leon, the only person of color on staff. Their token dreadlocks man. A recovering addict himself. Leon stands. "Okay, guys, good focus." Joy in the ranks. Everybody tucking their clipboards under their arms, face down. "You can leave your papers in your lockers. Both paragraphs due by your next individual counseling session." Come on, come on. Smoke-time burning. Rule: nobody too restless until Leon gives the Dismissed. "Community meeting, one o'clock. What's the usual reminder for on-your-own time?"

  In unison: "No war stories." A regular tragic chorus.

  "Any questions?" Everybody's feet ready to run. Wannabe's got a question. Dick-head knows everybody's in nicotine withdrawal. What the fuck. "Yo, Dick."

  "What's on for today in Recreational Therapy?"

  "Ten-foot wall." Groans. "Okay, guys, cigarette break, ten minutes. See you at lunch, twelve fifteen." Everybody quelling stampede. Without obvious hurry, he's the first one out the door.

  Percocet. Jesus.

  Shuffle, shuffle. People lining up for the community meeting. Got to make up his mind. Make up the beddybye he's going to lie in. Ring, ring, ring. "Leave a message."

  "It's Mark; guess I'm going to have to figure this one out on my own." Going to have to deal with this. Get there in time to be somewhere in the middle. Not gold-star-first, not fuck-you-last. See Wannabe's right next to John, today's counselor-in-charge. A positive that John's the honcho heading up the session. Drop a dime, John's going to be up for damage control. Better than Lindsey or that other social worker—what's her name—that bitch.

  Lorraine enters, checks the circle. Lorraine glides over. "This seat saved?"

  "Guess not."

  Musky perfume. A top that reveals that one crescent of pale belly. She crosses her legs so her knee is breathing onto his thigh. "How's it going?" she says.

  "Up and down. How about you?"

  "More down," she tells him.

  The room gets quieter. Wannabe's going to do roll, clean the erasers. Roll: all part of the ritual of surrender. Everybody trying to give their own unique call of submission: here, yep, yo.

  "Mark?"

  "Present." May have a present for you, Good Dick.

  New Vista costumes: Nike warm-ups, white stripes flash, flash as people get arranged. His costume as well, but with little melted craters from cigarette burns. John's eyes sweep the circle. He's a small man, with a round glow. John leans back—his body open. Slight shifting in the circle to mirror that. Lorraine increases the distance from his thigh. "All right, let's have a moment of silence. Get ourselves here for this meeting." John's checking each one of them out.

  A real contact person is John. Who's looking at him, who's gray and edgy. He gives John an eye to eye, but not too intense. That'd be a giveaway that he's trying too hard. How is he looking? Shaky. John's big on "Listen to what your body is telling you." His body is saying, "Do not call on me."

  John rests one palm in the other. Breathes. "What's one of the main things each of us has got to stay focused on as a member of this community?" He waits a few seconds, keeps them all on alert, before he picks a person he knows needs to be picked. "Jarvis?"

  Jarvis is still in perpetual Don't-fuck-with-me mode. A little guy with arms too long for the rest of him. Jarvis stares at the ceiling, sighs. "Everything is your responsibility." John cocks his head like he didn't quite hear. Jarvis sighs again. "I mean, everything is my responsibility."

  "Everybody agree to that."

  "Yes." He calls it out with the rest.

  "What's another important part of keeping this community healthy?" Again John waits. No guessing game here. Same two questions begin every community meeting. He knows John is going to call on him, has sniffed his fear. "Mark?"

  "No secrets." Cold sweat now.

  "All right, let's go around the circle. If you have anything that needs to be brought before the group, let's hear it. Start with you, Mark. Looks like you've got something on your mind."

  Pass or rat? His body wants to twitch. He sets his jaw on the spasm. "Someone in this group has drugs. These drugs are a threat to my sobriety." Breathe. "He needs to tell the truth about this or I'm going to turn him in." He makes himself look at John. John doesn't say anything. Rest of the circle—eyes down. A few white stripes flail out: the run reflex. Wannabe's gone ghosty. He gives Wannabe a stare. A blast of power, no question. Finally a couple of the older guys look his way, but they're still in neutral. Nobody's saying anything. Let no shit fall on them. John's got all day.

  Wannabe sits up, places both his feet flat in front of his chair. Swallows. "Probably it's me he's talking about. I've got some pain medication."

  Bad confession, Wannabe. Now you're going down. "Yes?" John says.

  "I've got a few doses of Percocet. For a back injury."

  John waits, head cocked again. Waits some more. "Anything else you want to say, Dick?"

  Dick shakes his head. John leans forward. "No," Dick says.

  "All right. Let's go around the group. Let's hear what you're feeling about this. Start with you, Mark."

  Truth or flim-flam? "Relieved. Percocet available in my room is a major threat." John gives him the what-else? lean. He should mention the motive thing—the plus Good Dick is a dick-head—but he's not going to.

  "Anything else?" John says.

  "That's it," he tells him, another eye to eye.

  "All right. Lorraine, let's start it off in your direction."

  "Pass," she says. "I've got to catch my breath."

  "Good idea. Everybody catch your breath. You, too, Dick."

  And the room becomes one big take-it-in-let-it-out. A couple of passes. He tries to keep from knotting into a shield. Then it's all coming at him from a distance. Like through a din of rain. Bullshit—pain medication—one of the old-timers finally takes it on. Glad it wasn't me had to do the duty, but it had to be done—Lorraine, a couple of the younger women. All of us are at risk—Big Jerry. Lots of Too Bad for you, Dick, but you know the rules. Sort of like a round. Some telling the truth; some just trying to cover their backs.

  Only Jarvis doesn't sing the song: "Fuck this," he tells them all.

  A few people laugh. "Go, Jarvis."

  Everything gets quiet. They all know they're down to the last licks. Wannabe will have to go first. Wannabe knows it too. He's sitting straight, looking earnest.

  "Anything more you want to say to the group, Dick?" John's voice so calm. So up-to-you.

  Dick's all red and blurry. Show your dick-head colors, your junkie scam. "Honestly …" Bullshit to follow. And it's like the whole group sinks back. "…my doctor gave me the meds. I felt like I needed them for the pain. I didn't realize it was such a big deal."

  John waits. The group's suspended. Then they lean his way. "Anything more you want to add, Mark?" John says, reaching both hands toward him.

  "I've said enough," he tells them. His clothes are so wet, he may leave tracks.

  On the way out a few of the older guys give him the thumbs-up, but even so he feels a lot of the group draw away.

  Smoke break, Dick Goode is among the missing. Back in his room before ten-foot-wall time, Dick Goode is gone.

  9 : Password

  BENEATH THE ROAR of the vacuum, Del feels a bang, bang, bang. It takes her a few seconds to register: the washing machine. On these rushes down the stairs
to shut it off, she always remembers to grab the rail. If she fell and broke her neck, she'd never forgive Richard. She pushes in the dial and the machinery comes to a clunking halt, makes those metal-parts-going-the-wrong-way clangs that cause Richard to wince if he's around. Thank the gods he's not around. She looks toward the garage and sees his legs still stretching from under her car. Repairing her exhaust system. Finally she gets the heavy towels shifted so the machine will hold the spin and goes back up to shut off the vacuum. It's almost dinnertime anyway.

  Richard's expecting a call about his taxes, so she mustn't tie up the phone by going online, but she's itching to find some long-term place that will take hold of Mark long enough for him to learn how to put together a day, stack one hour on top of another, on top of another, without knocking them over. How many years might that take? Once she gets off some faxes of good places, the knot beneath her sternum will loosen. Even a quick check would calm her some.

  In Richard's office, with one eye on his legs, she switches on his computer and types in his password: R5555555. Half the time she screws this up, so easy to lose track of what 5 you're on. Why such a hard password? she'd asked him. That's why, he told her. Richard will leave for Vegas in two days. An uninterrupted stretch of two weeks at her house. No abandoning Luke. Plenty of time to research rehabs on the web without worrying that she's hogging the line. Without Richard's comments on the unhealthiness of staring at a screen all day whenever he goes by. When his two kids were young, he came home one sunny summer afternoon and found them with their faces a few feet from the screen, mouths agog; he picked up the TV, walked out the door and dumped it over the bank. Makes her own web-time when he's around, edgy.

  She types SAMHSA into the Google box and instantly the words "Substance Abuse Mental Health Service Administration" appear on the screen. As if it's been waiting for her to summon it. The Higher Power of cyberspace. Farther down, "Find Treatment," click on that and the site opens: happy music, photographs of people smiling, assuring you you can find help. Next she's taken to a map of the U.S. Click on NY: she's told there are 11,000 treatment centers available. Think of the tangle of umbilici connecting all those mothers to all those "treatments." "Type in your location." Marwick. "There are 286 facilities within 100 miles of your starting point." Please, please. She hears the downstairs door open, and quick as she can, she disconnects and turns off the computer, her heart banging as if she's been caught. Which indeed she has. Almost. She steps into the kitchen.

  "Any calls?" Richard says as he comes up the stairs. "What's up? You look a little … rattled." He hooks his arm through hers and bounces against her with a two-step. Then he licks her ear. When, laughing, she tries to pull away, he holds her close and whispers, "Just your clamps had rusted."

  She backs him up against the sink. "You want to eat now?"

  "You know it's still not too late to change your mind about going to Vegas." He rocks her a little. "We could even drive out. Maybe go up in the mountains. Not spend so much time in the casinos. That's why you didn't have fun before."

  Fun? She does not want to go anywhere. She wants to be alone. She wants to help Mark get settled in the right place. She wants to sit down and draw a branch of shadbush in first blossom. Once this rain stops, to walk with Luke up through the woods and watch spring go green. She kisses his neck. No's are hard for Richard. The first ten years she knew him, she never told him no about anything. They got along better then. She puts her arms around his warm body. He smells good, rain tinged with oil.

  "I don't want to go anywhere right now. I need to stay here." She feels his body tense. He moves away from her and settles at the table. He opens the paper. "Richard."

  He doesn't respond. For years she's said, Let's talk. He will not or cannot. He reads. She heats up the clam chowder, switches on the toaster-oven for the garlic bread. Adds apples to the tossed salad. She breathes and loosens her shoulders. When Lee was silent, for months at a time, her movements became robotic. She mumbled when she spoke to Mark and Aaron, her throat so locked, her jaw trembled when she opened her mouth. Sometimes when Richard refuses to speak, she can float on the edge of it, without clinching. But usually it pisses her off.

  Richard lifts his chowder and sniffs it while he reads. He takes the spoon back and forth to his mouth without even looking at the bowl. When he finishes with the first section of the Marwick Sun, she slides it her way. She's always refused to read at the table, her small daily protest, but lately when he reads, she reads too. At first she told herself it was just a yield to reality, but now she sees it means "I'm not here either."

  Bedtime and she still hasn't been able to get back on the internet. Two hundred eighty-six facilities within a hundred miles of Marwick. She'd like to find a fax place to get the information off to Mark first thing tomorrow. She knows he'll be expecting something from her by then. But it's better not to change her routine of going to bed when Richard does, especially now when he's already upset with her.

  It's dark. She goes slow, not wanting to bump into the sharp corner of the footboard. There's only a heap of covers once she gets to the edge of the bed. Usually Richard sleeps from corner to corner, but tonight his body's confined to one side, his side. She pulls her gown off and slides in. Sometimes when they aren't speaking, when it feels as if she's lying down with a stranger, she has to keep her nightgown on, but tonight she wants the silence to end. His back is to her. She settles on her side, pushes her toes against his heel. He doesn't move away. Then she warms her always-cold hands between her legs. After a few minutes she rests a palm against his shoulder blade, feels his heat. Then she pulls her knees up to tuck into his. He's still, but not tensed. Minutes more, then he reaches back and places his hand on her thigh. She puts her hand over his, slides her fingers through his fingers, touches the warm flesh-wrinkles between, the smooth pad of his thumb.

  She leans into the bathroom. Richard's got a big yellow towel wrapped around his waist; his face, lathered and close to the mirror. "Oatmeal?"

  He seems to be over it. He leaves tomorrow. If she's careful, they may part in good spirits: Have a lovely time. I'll miss you. She knows in about a week this will be true. She measures the water exactly and is mindful of the number of raisins. She punctures the canned milk, just one small hole because Richard says it keeps better that way.

  Richard comes through to check the temperature, still wrapped in the duck-yellow towel. His linen closet is stacked high with thick towels: lavender, pale blue, fuchsia. There was never a dry one, he told her when she asked him about the stockpile.

  "Thirty-five degrees. Probably be in the seventies in Vegas." He switches on the CD player. Mario Lanza. She and Richard have joined one of those clubs where you tear out the little pictures and paste them on the little card: ten free CDs and you only have to buy three and then you can get out. Each of them got five choices. Maybe seventy-five little perforated patches, but fifty, groups you've never heard of, and maybe only two you'd even consider actually buying if you were at a store. She always rips out New World Symphony and Pictures at an Exhibition, but then remembers she's got both of those on tape somewhere. After they lick the little jagged oblongs and slap them onto the ten spaces, they comment on the other's picks: You don't even like the Rolling Stones. You think you're ready for Mahler? Usually they sleep on it and the next day agree to throw the whole lot in the trash, but this last time, Richard actually dropped the envelope in the mailbox. Mario Lanza singing "Danny Boy" made him do it, he said.

  She sets the oatmeal pot on the table. "Okay," she tells him.

  He turns Mario up, "Be my love…," then up even louder and he joins in, his lovely arms spread wide, slowly swaying from foot to foot, raising his leg delicately into the air each time he shifts his weight. "'Just fill my arms the way you've filled my dreams…'"

  "Richard." Richard has long, slender, very white legs. He moves toward her. She ducks under his arm and turns down the CD. He's over it. She misses him already.

  He com
es back to the kitchen in his jockeys and a new white T-shirt and starts to divide up the oatmeal. "You're going to eat in your underwear?"

  "I am."

  Another benefit of wood heat. She lets the pot slip into the soapy water as soon as he scrapes her share into her bowl. "Richard, pretty soon we're going to switch to raisin bran."

  "Just as soon as we hear the first geese," he tells her. He stops eating and beams. "And this year you're not going to put sugar on yours."

  "Oh."

  They eat and Mario sings. She takes her vitamins, the big gray one for seniors, always a test. He clanks his spoon around the edges of his bowl to get the last of his cereal just as she's beginning hers. While she eats, he sticks things back into the refrigerator. She watches him, the rounds of his buttocks as he bends. His big, agile body.

  "What time's your plane tomorrow?" She turns up the heat under the kettle. "Want tea?"

  He hesitates, then says, "I think I will." This is a break from routine. Usually he's out and doing before she starts the dishes, sometimes even before she finishes eating. Out splitting logs or filling the bird feeder or hauling wood in the wheelbarrow to stack in the bins downstairs.

  "What time do you have to leave here?" The kettle is making those popping sounds which mean it's about to whistle.

  He sits down at the table. "Around two." He pauses. "I'd like you to drive me to the airport. The last time I left the truck in the parking lot, someone rammed into my tailgate."

  Her stomach lurches. The kettle screams. For a few seconds she draws a blank on how to get it to stop. When she tips it up to pour, her hands are shaking. How quickly the body answers. She pushes each of the bags down into the cups.