Everything You Are(25)
Dennis wipes his forehead and paces out of the room.
Braden watches him go, confused by the proceedings. Uneasy. He’d expected an intervention. Maybe a question chain, dragging the man through his relapse, through the hours before the drink. Not this, whatever this is.
Everybody holds a tense silence until Dennis is out of the room.
“All right, then, what will it be?” Oscar asks conspiratorially sotto voce.
“A party.” Jean drags her chair closer to the table. There’s a small spot of color in each cheek. “A surprise party.”
“At the zoo,” Katie says.
“How about a boat? We rent a sailboat, spend a day out on the water. Dennis used to own one, right? He’d love it.”
“He said sailing was kind of stressful,” Len objects. “Loved the water, but the sails and all require a lot of attention and he wasn’t into that.”
“What about one of those party barges?” Oscar suggests. “Easy. Fun. Repurposed from what we’re not doing to what we are.”
“I love it!” Phee glows as if there is a light inside her. “Can we afford it, though? Gonna be pricey.”
“I’ve got this one.” Len grins at them all. “My projected life span is much shorter than my projected cash flow. And I like boats.”
“Agreed?”
A chorus of ayes goes around the table and stops at Braden. All of the gazes follow, waiting for some sort of reaction.
“Braden?” Phee prompts. “Are you in?”
“I’m just visiting,” he says, carefully. Appease the lunatics. Tell them it’s a great idea, sounds like fun. Evade. Avoid. Get out of here and go have a drink.
But there is Phee. As infuriating and crazy as he knows her to be, his eyes are drawn back to her over and over again. The light on her hair, the way her smile makes her glow as if there’s a hidden light source inside her. She reminds him of his cello—resonant, deep.
Dangerous, he tells himself.
Katie draws him back to the moment. “Everybody gets a voice. Don’t tell me you don’t have an opinion.”
“I have one. I don’t think you want to hear it.”
“There are no bad opinions,” Len says. Braden disagrees. Opinions cause a lot of trouble in the world, but in this case, expressing his will piss these people off and free him from the spell he’s under.
“Since you asked for it,” he says, “I think you’re all way off the rails here. Somebody relapses and they get a party? You’re completely rewarding the addictive behavior. Addiction is deceptive and sly and needs to be—”
“Punished?” Phee snorts. “We are reinforcing life enjoyment. We’ve all got enough guilt without other people piling it on. Does it help you when people beat you up about drinking?”
He has to admit she’s right. All of Lilian’s haranguing, the guilt that sinks him every time he tries to work through the twelve steps, all of it just makes him want another drink.
“Which would be the greater incentive?” Oscar asks. “A shaming session from your support group, or the promise of a superfun day on the water celebrating your choice to come back to sobriety?”
“The party, of course, but—”
“So are you coming?” Phee asks. “Will you be there?”
He stares at her, at all of them, everything he thought he knew about life and alcohol and sobriety jumbled into unfamiliar shapes.
“I’ll be there.” The words come out of his mouth before he knows he’s going to say them.
“Excellent. Give him the contract. I’ll go let Dennis in.” Oscar shoves his chair back from the table and heads for the door.
“You have to sign in blood,” Katie purrs in a low, theatrical voice.
Len shoves a sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen across the table to him. “Nothing quite so dramatic.”
Braden reads:
Adventure Angels Manifesto
I hereby commit to falling in love with life in all of its manifestations of trouble and triumph, joy and grief, boredom and excitement.
I will treat each day as an adventure, full of possibility, and I will seek to be present for every moment, whether pleasant or unpleasant.
I will resist the lure of alcohol, always vigilant against its many deceptions.
I commit to the pursuit of honesty regarding my relationship with alcohol. If I should be overcome by temptation, I promise to share my struggle with the Adventure Angels group and allow them to support me back into life.
I commit to becoming an ambassador for adventure, bringing new experiences into the lives of others while engaging in them myself.
And I solemnly promise to hold sacred the confidences and stories shared in this group, along with the identities of individuals who attend.
If I should fail, I commit to picking myself up and trying again.
On this day, I do so solemnly swear.
Braden’s pen hovers over the signature line.
So many promises in his life made and broken. The only elements that make sense to him in this weird little contract are confidentiality and the commitment to stay sober. If he signs, he will surely fail, and it seems to him that if he breaks one more promise, that will be the end of any hope for him. The very last clause, though, gives him permission for the inevitable failure.