He pressed his eyes with the heels of his hands again. I thought he might be crying and trying to hide it. But when he dropped his hands, his eyes were dry. I wondered if he’d cried over there. If the war had used up every tear he’d ever had in him. Or if that was the place where he’d learned not to cry, no matter how bad things got.
“The reason I haven’t been raising my hand as a newcomer is this,” he said, seeming more settled in his brain. As if he’d come home to the US in his head and could speak more calmly. “Here’s the thing about that. I’m still on a lot of pain meds for the injury. I’m taking them as prescribed now, because I really don’t have any choice. And I know from hearing you all share that you can still call yourself clean if you’re taking necessary meds the way the doctor prescribed them. But I don’t want to do it like that. When I’m really clean, I’ll come in here and say so, and we can start counting my time from then.”
He stalled again. Looked around the room. He seemed to have just wakened up somehow. He seemed vaguely surprised by everything he saw.
“Of course I’m totally humiliated because I told you all that,” he said. “And I’m done talking now. I’ll just sit here and let somebody else share and wonder why I said all that. I guess I got tired of knowing it would come out sooner or later. I guess I got to the point where maybe it was easier just to get it over with. Speaking of which, I call on Joe. The guy who served so much more honorably than I did. Who’s probably over there thinking I’m like something disgusting to scrape off the bottom of his shoe. Because if he’s thinking that, I want to go ahead and hear it now. I’m not good with waiting for terrible things to catch up with me. I’d rather just get them over with.”
He paused, but nobody spoke.
“I’m done,” he said.
Everybody in the room said, “Thanks, Roy.”
Including Zoe Dinsmore. Who I’d temporarily forgotten was there.
I looked at her and she looked at me. Her eyes held no judgment. Neither did they seem to want to console me. There was something very matter of fact in her gaze. As if she were telling me, “Yes, this is the world, Lucas. I’ve been dealing with it since before you were born.”
Joe said, “My name is Joe and I’m an addict.”
Everyone said, “Hi, Joe.”
He looked right at my brother, who refused to look back.
“Thanks for your share, Roy. In case you don’t know it yet, you’re not the only person in this room who’s done something stupid behind drugs, and you’re not the only person whose fear got the best of them. So far as I know, there’s not a person in this room who cares what you did when you were out there using. We all mostly care what you’re going to do now.”
Then he went on sharing about his own situation, and the meeting just moved along. The focus never fell on my brother Roy again.
It was as if the drama he’d just shared was no better and no worse than anybody else’s drama. Or maybe there was no “as if” about it. Maybe that was just the truth of the situation.
Zoe Dinsmore came up to us after the meeting. Met us at the door.
“You boys want a ride home?” she asked.
But my brother Roy said, “No, thanks. Thanks anyway, Mrs. Dinsmore. My brother and I can take the bus.”
He didn’t seem to be afraid of her, or avoiding her. I didn’t hear a lot of subtext. It sounded like he just figured we were okay. And maybe like he even enjoyed those little bits of time we spent, just the two of us, making our way back and forth to the meetings.
But I might’ve been reading that last part in.
As I followed Roy out the door, I looked at Zoe Dinsmore and she looked at me. And she nodded at me, the way she’d nodded at my brother. A nod to a lot of history. I nodded back. Maybe to acknowledge that it was a huge deal that she’d showed up in the meetings again. And also that it was a huge deal that my brother had unburdened himself and joined the group for real.
And maybe those two things weren’t even entirely coincidental to one another, though I wasn’t sure where that thought had come from, or if there was anything to it.
I turned and stepped out into the dusky parking lot, hurrying to catch up with Roy. I was thinking I knew approximately what history Zoe Dinsmore and I were acknowledging with our nod, but what could possibly have transpired between her and my brother?
I’d been so shocked and saddened and compelled by Roy’s story that I’d forgotten to wonder.
We walked side by side toward the bus stop.
“You know her?” I asked.
“Just a little. I know who she is.”
“How do you know her?”
“Don’t you remember my first real girlfriend?”
He was struggling now on his crutches. I could tell he was tired. Part of me wished he would have agreed to the ride. But then we couldn’t have had this talk. I was torn.
It was an evening of feeling torn.
“Yeah. I remember her. Mary Ellen. Right?”
“Right. Mary Ellen Paulston.”
“Oh. I didn’t remember her last name. That sounds really familiar. Why does that sound so familiar?”
It may seem like a strange thing to have said. Because it was his girlfriend’s last name, and I’d known her. I must’ve known her last name at one time. But that name was familiar in a whole different sense. I knew it from somewhere
