The Most Dangerous Thing

known.

“Because I wasn’t here?”

“And because of Gordon.”

She measures her words. “That was shocking.”

“You knew him, right? Outside of AA.”

Never lie until cornered. Counter first. “What makes you think that?”

“You two talked about how this place used to be a Catholic parish, back in the day.”

She remembers now, how Go-Go reacted the first time she came here, his inability to disguise his feelings at seeing her. She let him-them-off the hook with some inane chatter about St. Lawrence, showed him how to play it off. Just like when they were kids.

“My little brother went here, but he was much younger than Go-Go.”

“Go-Go?”

Shit. “What?”

“I thought you said-”

“One of those things. Gordon. I meant to say Gordon. I barely know my own name, after working eighteen hours yesterday. Mouth not connected to brain.” She smiles, lets him contemplate the mouth in question, full and wide under a fresh coat of lipstick. “Gordon. Duh.”

Joey had gone to St. Lawrence, at Rick’s insistence. Rita hadn’t even known that he was Catholic when they were together, but when he realized how close Rita’s apartment was to the school, he insisted that Rita enroll Joey there and he paid the tuition. McKey went to public school, not that she cared. She didn’t want to wear a uniform every day. Now that she wears one for work, she finds she enjoys it. One less decision to make. Joey went to St. Lawrence through third grade, the year that McKey graduated from high school. Her mother, by then on the outs with Larry-big surprise, that not working out-decided she wanted to move back to Florida, make a new start. Rick objected, and that’s when she dropped the bomb: Joey’s not your kid. Nowadays, there are talk shows essentially dedicated to paternity testing and baby-daddy-dom, but twenty-plus years ago, this was considerably more novel, the kind of judicial issue that all but required a Solomon. Rick was lucky enough to land a progressive judge, someone who said it was basically his choice: He could continue to pay child support and inhabit the role of Joey’s father, although he still couldn’t stop Rita from taking him to Florida. Or he could suspend ties altogether.

McKey thought it should be a no-brainer: if he couldn’t prevent Rita from moving away with the kid, he should definitely end support. But Rick didn’t see it that way. After the breakup with Rita, he became almost insufferably proper. Rita cheated on him, played him for a fool, but Rick acted as if he were the one who had to make amends. He started going to church, enrolled Joey in the parish school, married a young goody-goody, ended up adopting two kids when it turned out she couldn’t have any of her own. He stayed in touch with McKey through college. “I’m here for you,” he would say, and she always wanted to say back: No, you’re not. Because Rick, for all his goodness and niceness, could never quite treat her like a daughter. She was his girlfriend’s daughter, his son’s sister, but not his daughter. It obviously wasn’t a blood thing because the lack of a blood connection to Joey didn’t keep him from wanting to be Joey’s dad. Eventually she stopped worrying about it.

What did she know from fathers and daughters, anyway? The only example she had close to hand was Gwen and her dad, and that wasn’t anything to emulate. For one thing, he was old and he looked it, even back in the day. And he was always-what was Tally Robison’s term for it?- holding forth . On the occasions that Mickey ate dinner with the Robisons, the meal was like another class, with quizzes on current events and science and history and vocabulary. She didn’t even try to participate, except when it came to plants and trees. Even as a girl, Mickey knew as much about those subjects as Dr. Robison. She didn’t have all the right words, but she understood the natural world in a way that Gwen didn’t. She was aware of the seasons and the smells. It was Mickey who taught Go-Go how to catch salamanders, Mickey who lured crawfish from the old storm drain at the bend in the creek, Mickey who found the tiny little fossil, which Rita threw away.

“You should study botany,” a bored high school adviser told her. But that wasn’t right for her. No job was. Park ranger, gardening-there was no paying gig that could return her to the way she felt when she roamed the hills of Leakin Park as a child. Maybe there is no job that can make a person feel as she felt at ten, eleven. That do-what- you-love bullshit-it’s another scam, as far as McKey is concerned, another way people set you up for disappointment. She loves having a job she doesn’t love because she’s always clear on why she’s there: to pay the bills.

The AA meeting gets under way and she assumes her attentive posture, listening and nodding, capable of taking in the stories, even while following her own thoughts. There really are only so many variations to addiction stories. Names change, but bottoming out, based on what she hears here, appears to be a largely universal experience. How much longer must she attend? Perhaps she’ll tell Dan she’s moving to Minneapolis. Always tricky to tell such a lie in a small-town city like Baltimore, where people’s paths are forever crossing, but if that day should come, she’ll find a plausible reason to be back here, no? Dan is a pain in the ass and too chummy for her. Maybe all his concern really is part of his role as her sponsor, but she’s dubious.

Take tonight, his insistence on walking her out to her car, as if there’s any danger in this church parking lot.

“I’m glad you’re back,” he says. “Now we just have to worry about Daisy.”

“Daisy?”

“The older woman who used to bring knitting to the meetings. Very Madame Defarge.”

She stares at him blankly, realizing she should recognize the reference, but not caring if he sees it has gone past her. Just like dinner with the Robisons, all those years ago, all that talk, talk, talk flying around the air. Mickey stared into space, defiantly bored by the Robisons, who thought they were so interesting.

“Big woman,” Dan says. “Wore flowery dresses. Smoked clove cigarettes.”

“Oh, yeah.” McKey doesn’t pay much attention to women because they are seldom of use to her.

“Her sponsor tried to call her, but she’s not answering, doesn’t even have voice mail.”

“Maybe she died.”

“McKey!” Dan acts as if she’s making a dark joke, but she was being merely factual. Daisy’s an old lady, probably alone. She could have fallen in her apartment. She could be lying there right now, dead or dying. Does Dan think all the tragedy of the world is linked to drinking? He probably does. He’s built his life around it.

“Be safe,” he says as she gets behind the wheel.

“I always am.”

It’s a haul, getting back to her apartment. It’s a haul getting almost anywhere from this corner of Baltimore, and she wonders, as she has often wondered, how her mother ended up there. Because of Rick, of course. She met Rick, he worked at the Exxon station, and there you have it. Or was it the man before Rick? Rita followed men wherever they led her, yet now she is living man-less in Florida. This must explain her sudden interest in McKey, the messages on her answering machine. Call me, call me, call me . No thanks. Not my problem you’re alone and bored. I’m alone and never bored.

McKey lets herself into her apartment and goes straight to the refrigerator, pours herself a glass of white wine. Nothing like pretending to be an alcoholic to give one a craving for drink. Liquor is like porn to those people, and after listening to them talk about it nonstop, she can’t wait to have a drink, although normally she can take it or leave it. Wrangling drunks at 30,000 feet puts one off alcohol. It was stupid, telling Sean she was in AA with Go-Go. And he probably blabbed to Tim-boys are the worst gossips-maybe even Gwen. Should they meet again, she won’t be able to drink in front of him. And she wants to see him again. Although it would be nice this time if he weren’t so blotto. He was useless.

She examines herself in the mirror, pleased by what she sees. Her body, like her mother’s, is naturally hard, at least for now. Hard is good. Hard is what she strives for across the board. Hard of body, hard of heart, hard of mind. McKey is a warrior, a survivor. She’s ready-for the plane to go down, for a terrorist to pull a knife, for the world to end, for whatever comes. And, increasingly, it feels like something is coming for her, but she’s sidestepped it for now. She’s pretty sure she’s sidestepped it.

But at night, alone in her water bed-her mother’s old bed, a gift McKey accepted from her half brother because