Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [169]
The world was glass, and Ellickson felt himself skittering over its surface.
Ellickson, drunk, had lashed out at his family one night and done something unforgivable. Nightfall had always brought his devils out. His wife had therefore taken the two kids, Alex and Barbara, and had driven 150 miles to her mother’s. His family hated him now for good reason, and although he could live with his wife’s hatred—he was sort of used to it—he couldn’t bear the idea that he had become a monster to his children. Ellickson’s shame felt so intense that when he contemplated his actions, he groaned aloud.
Patiently and without hope, he went to the twelve-step meetings.
He had maintained the drinking for years in a careful program of adjustments and stealth. His job as a supervisor of hospital cleaning personnel had been so undemanding that he could work steadily under the influence and no one ever noticed. Drunk before breakfast, his mind regulated by alcohol, he’d been as steady as a bronze statue. The vodka had kept his breath clean and his hands strong. Now that he was sober, no one seemed to like him anymore, and his judgment flew away from him in little clouds. The real Ellickson, without the gleaming varnish of the booze, seemed to constitute an offense.
Desperate, unable to move, faced with the frightfulness and tedium of Saturday afternoon, he called his friend Lester, the ex-doctor.
“Lester,” he said, “I’m in trouble.”
“Hey, buddy. What sort of help d’you need? How’s the day so far?” Lester asked, blithely. The man’s usual speech was somewhat formal, but Lester was all right. He would cross a minefield without hesitation if you needed him to.
“I’m barely hanging on,” Ellickson said. “The sky’s falling again.”
“It does that. Yes?” He waited. “Go on.”
Ellickson tried to speak. But even speech seemed difficult. “It’s all creeping up, every bit of it. Do you know the word ‘heartsick’?” Ellickson waited for his next thought, and, on the other end of the line, Lester waited, too. “Boy, is that a good word. I’m glad we have that word. So, here’s the thing. I can’t do it anymore.” Ellickson knew that he did not have to define “it” to Lester. “I’m sitting in a chair and I can’t do it.”
“I can come over.” Lester had once been a surgeon—until drinking had led him ungently out of medicine. He couldn’t go back. Now he volunteered at a science museum, explaining the fossils to children. “Tell me what to do now. I can be over there in ten minutes. Say the word.”
“Maybe. No. It actually isn’t that. I just can’t live this way anymore.”
“No. That’s wrong, my friend. You can live any old way,” Lester said, “except drunk. We all can. Remember this will pass. Everything passes.” Then he said some of the usual admonitory phrases, complete with elaboration into belief and faith. They sounded correct but feeble at two thirty-six in the afternoon. “You can be proud of yourself. This is the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life. We’re in this together, pal. People love you. Never doubt it.”
“Right, right. People. Ha. What people? The stars hate me. The moon hates me. The entire creation is opposed to my existence. What I need is a drink.”
“No, that’s what you don’t need. Ease up. What about the bus cure?”
The bus cure involved getting on a city bus and riding around until the urge to have a drink had passed. It only worked, however, if Ellickson took the number 13 route, which did not go down the streets where the bars were located. Also, he had to take a book or a newspaper along with him for the bus cure to work.
“I feel all the time as if …” Ellickson feared