Then she turned and stomped away.
Chapter Fourteen
My Name Is Roy And . . .
I beat Connor out to the lady’s cabin the following morning. Purposely. I figured she might still be sleeping, but I was wrong on that score. She was sweeping off her front porch with an old broom. A very old broom It was missing a lot of its straws.
“Hey,” I said, patting the dogs’ heads as best I could while they jumped and danced around me.
“You’re early.”
She stopped sweeping and leaned on her broom. She was a lot of woman and it was not much broom. It didn’t look like it wanted to hold her.
“I need to ask you about meetings,” I said.
“Meetings,” she repeated.
“Like for people who’re addicted to drugs. You said you used to go to them.”
“Yeah. I guess I did say that.”
For a moment she just stared at me. I was guessing she was curious as to whether I was asking for myself or a friend. So I answered what was in my head, even though it might not have been in hers at all.
“And it has to be an open meeting. Because I need to be able to go, too. And I’m not . . . you know . . .”
I hated to use that word. The A-word. It seemed harsh.
She turned and walked into the house, leaving the door open. I stood there feeling like a fool because I didn’t know if that had been an okay thing to ask or not. But I figured if I had offended her, she would have slammed the door behind her. Or at least closed it, shutting me out.
She came back a minute or two later with a little paper booklet in her hands. Maybe only four pages, or maybe six. She sat on the edge of the porch with it, and I sat down next to her. The minute I dropped my face to their level, the dogs smothered me with wet kisses.
When I was able to open my mouth safely—which involved holding Rembrandt at arm’s length with one hand against his chest—I asked about the booklet.
“We have so many meetings in this town that you need to sort them all out on paper?”
“Hardly,” she said. “This is for the whole tricounty area. Okay. The one at the bank is still going on. That’s the only NA that’s right here in Ashby. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6:00 p.m. Monday and Friday are open meetings. Wednesday is closed for addicts only. It’s in that community room at the First Bank.”
“Oh yeah. I know where that is.”
We sat in silence for a moment. I expected her to ask me who I was wanting to take to meetings, but she never did.
I figured that was the difference between Zoe Dinsmore and myself. She didn’t seem to burn to know things. She seemed to be able to leave everything alone in her head.
Either that or it was easy enough to figure out on her own.
“Can I say how I feel?” I asked after a time.
“You always did before.”
That stung me a little. But I kept going. Zoe Dinsmore was pretty damned beelike, and if you were going to shrink back every time you got stung, well . . . I figured it would be a waste of time to come out to her cabin in the first place.
“I feel like I’m having to save too many people at once here.” At the corner of my eye I saw her nod slowly. “I mean, I’m not even out of high school. What am I doing trying to help all these people? Three people all at once like this. That’s a lot, don’t you think?”
“You can take me off your list,” she said.
“But then I might lose you.”
A pause.
Then she said, “Okay. Seriously. Want me to tell you how to take the pressure off yourself?”
“Yes, ma’am. I sure do.”
“You’ve just got to stay out of the outcomes, Lucas. It’s not that you walked Connor out here to meet me that’s weighing you down. It’s the fact that you’re holding yourself responsible for whether it works out or not. You can take your brother to some meetings without turning yourself inside out. Trouble is, you take on the responsibility of being the one who sees to it that he recovers. Want to know why that stuff takes so much out of you? Easy. It’s all stuff that’s out of your control. You’re trying to change things that’re not within your control to change. And whenever you try to do something that’s impossible to do, you’re going to find yourself a little on the tired side. Make sense?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It does.”
It did. Actually. Though I’m not sure that was the good news.
“You don’t sound too sure.”
“It’s just that . . . what you just said . . . it’s that kind of advice that lets you know what to do but not how to do it. I mean, how do you not take that stuff on?”
“Right. I’ll grant you that. It’s easier said than done. But practice at it. You’ll get better at anything you practice.”
We sat quietly for another minute.
Then she said, “Here,” and held out the meeting schedule to me.
“You should keep it,” I said. “You told me you might think about going back.”
“I know where those three meetings are if I want them.”
I sighed. Took it from her. Folded it up and stuck it in my shirt pocket.
“How’s it going with Connor?” I asked.
“That’s not what you were going to practice, now is it?”
“I just thought maybe if I knew more, I could worry less.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” she said. Then, “I can’t really tell you how it’s going, because I don’t really know. He’s talking to me. Talking is better than not talking. But beyond that it’s hard to say.”
“I wish I knew why he couldn’t talk to me.”
“Because you take it on.”
“What
