Don’t Let Me Go(109)

Grace was hoping they’d talk more on the way to the meeting, but nobody did.

? ? ?

Grace was on her way to the coffee and literature table in the back to see if they had cookies this week or if nobody bothered to bring them, and while she was pushing and “excuse-me-ing” her way through all the people, she banged right into the big tire of a wheelchair.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Curtis Schoenfeld.”

“Hey, Grace,” he said, like he wished he didn’t have to talk to her at all.

“Where’d you go? I’ve been coming to meetings with my mom again for like a year and I never once saw you. Did you move away?”

“No,” he said, wheeling himself away from her. “We didn’t move.”

She thought about walking along with him and talking some more, but he didn’t seem to want to talk, and besides, she reminded herself, he was a giant stinkhead, and he didn’t seem to have gone in a very non-stinky direction since she last saw him. So instead she just snagged three peanut butter cookies and sat in the back and waited for the meeting to start, which wasn’t a very long wait, because they’d gotten there a little late, practically when the meeting started.

She decided to listen better to the steps this time, even though she really didn’t wake up and decide that until the reader got to four.

“Four. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

The man who was reading the steps had a deep, honey voice that reminded her a little of Jesse, and made her lonely for him.

“Five. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

Well, at least she admitted it, Grace thought.

“Six. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.”

So maybe she just wasn’t entirely ready yet, and maybe that was OK, because she was only at step five so far.

“Seven. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.”

Grace didn’t tend to think of her mom together with words like humble. Then again, she’d looked pretty humble when she’d come out of the bedroom with Yolanda.

Maybe she just needed time to get through more of the steps. It sounded like just admitting a defect wasn’t the same as having it taken away. That was a whole two steps down the road.

At four steps a year, that would be…

But something interrupted her thoughts. The reading of the steps and traditions was over, and the group leader asked if anyone was in their first thirty days of recovery, so he could give them a welcome chip. And Grace could never have guessed who would raise their hands. Both of Curtis Schoenfeld’s parents, that’s who! Both of them! So that’s why she hadn’t seen him for this whole year!

Grace looked around to see where Curtis was sitting, and she saw him right away, but he wouldn’t look at her. Poor Curtis. Grace hoped his parents would get it right this time, and not put him through what she went through with her mom. There wasn’t a stinkhead on the planet Grace would wish that on.

The first lady who shared was an anniversary person, like her mom. There were two that night. This lady, who had eleven years, and then her mom with one. So Grace knew her mom would go second.

But, for some reason, even though she usually didn’t listen very well in the meetings, Grace listened to the Eleven Year Lady. Maybe because she was talking about positive stuff, different ways to look to things, not just going over and over all the drugs she took. Or maybe it was because Grace could tell her mom was listening, and that something her mom was hearing was making her look…humble.

Accepting things. That’s what the talk was about. About how insane it is to try to pretend something isn’t a certain way, or that you can make it another way, just because you don’t like it. And how that seems to be the one thing that makes addicts use drugs, and pretty much ruins everybody’s lives. This thing about refusing to just accept the way things are when you can’t change them anyway.

Then it was her mom’s turn to talk, but she didn’t seem to have much of anything to say. She said her name was Eileen, and that she was an addict, but then she just kept tripping over her own words. Finally she said she couldn’t really say anything because she didn’t know anything. She said she used to think she knew a lot, but she just got it now, how wrong that was, and how she didn’t know a damn thing.

Grace snuck a little glance over at Curtis Schoenfeld to see if he was laughing at her mom for not knowing a damn thing, but he didn’t look like he was even listening. Besides, at least her mom had a year clean, so probably he wouldn’t dare.

? ? ?

After the meeting, Grace distinctly heard Yolanda tell her mom she’d done a good share. She gave Grace’s mom a pat on the shoulder and said that.

“Good share.”

Everyone was milling around and talking, and Grace squeezed her way through to Yolanda and said, “What was good about it? She said she didn’t know anything.”

“Right,” Yolanda said. “That was the good part.”

“OK, that makes no sense at all. How can it be good to know nothing?”

“It’s not. But if you know nothing, it’s good to know that you know nothing.”

“Oh,” Grace said. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Because as long as you think you know everything, nothing changes.”