A Million Little Pieces - James Frey [196]
As we go over all of it, Ken and Joanne dutifully explain everything and I dutifully listen to them. I figure I owe them the respect of listening to them. When we are finished, I am relieved. If all goes as I hope and I plan and I expect it to go, I will never have to listen to anything having to do with my own involvement with Alcoholics Anonymous and the Twelve Steps ever again.
I close my file. I ask Joanne if she minds if I smoke and she laughs and says she was about to ask me the same thing. We both light up. Ken stands and says he’s going to go and I stand and I thank him for all of his time and all of his effort and I shake his hand and he wishes me luck and he tells me to call him if I ever have questions or concerns and I thank him again and he leaves. I sit back down and Joanne speaks.
You feeling good?
Yeah.
Excited?
Yeah.
You get hold of your Brother?
He’s coming to pick me up in the morning. I think a friend of mine will be with him.
What are you gonna do?
Get a fucking cheeseburger.
She laughs.
If you had told me you wanted one I would have brought one for you.
You’ve done enough for me.
Will you come say good-bye in the morning?
Absolutely.
Good.
I put out my smoke and I stand and I thank Joanne and she says don’t worry about it and I leave her Office. I walk back through the Halls and I go to my Room and I start gathering my things, though there is little to gather. A couple of pairs of pants. A couple of T-shirts. A sweater and a pair of slippers and a pair of shoes. Three books and a lighter. It isn’t much, but it is mine, and it is all that I need. As I finish packing it into a small plastic bag, Miles walks into the Room. He is carrying a brown manila envelope.
There was something in the mail for you.
He hands me the envelope. I sit down on my bed.
Thank you.
As Miles unpacks and assembles his clarinet, I stare at the envelope. It is plain and brown. There is no return address and the postmark is from San Francisco. It is addressed to me here at the Clinic. The handwriting is simple and legible, the letters wide and loose and loopy. It looks like the handwriting of a woman. I think about women I know who live in San Francisco. There is only one and she wouldn’t speak to me, much less write me a letter.
I open the envelope. I open it carefully along the ridge where it had been sealed before mailing. It tears slowly, and when I have it open, I reach inside. I feel a small stack of photographs. They are held together by a rubber band. I take them out of the envelope.
The first photo in the stack is a black-and-white photo of her. Her with blonde hair like thick ropes of silk. Her with blue eyes like the ice of the Arctic. She is standing in her Room, the Room where we first met, and she is smiling and she is holding a stuffed animal. I know this photo, and I used to have a copy of it. I used to carry the copy around with me in my wallet. I carried it before we were together, I carried it when we were together, I carried it after we were apart. She is the holding the animal, some kind of stuffed lion, in front of her chest. Her hair is down, she is not wearing makeup, and her smile is open and wide, as if the camera’s shutter snapped just before she started laughing. She is beautiful in the picture. Absolutely beautiful.
I start looking through the rest of the pictures. There is one of us walking down a street together. We are holding hands and smiling. There is one of us lying together on a couch. I am asleep and she is kissing my cheek.