Party Girl_ A Novel - Anna David [110]
Finally, a few days later, I sit in Rachel’s fern-filled apartment and read her everything I have—an entire hundred-sheet notebook’s worth. And then I read some more. And smoke. And read some more. She nods and smokes with me, occasionally taking notes on a yellow legal pad.
“You must be bored stiff,” I say when we’re getting into our fourth hour.
“Not at all. Remember, you’re being of service by allowing me to hear all this.”
People with the most sober time at Pledges talk a lot about being of service and how listening to someone else talk about their problems takes them out of their own heads, and how almost all the problems we alcoholics have are the same—most of them related to our oversized egos—and how they find themselves giving suggestions that they probably need to hear themselves. To be honest, I’ve assumed that most of them are full of shit. But I’m looking at Rachel and, since she’s a teacher and not an actress and Pledges is always telling us how important it is that we work a program of “rigorous honesty,” I assume she’s telling the truth. So I keep reading and reading and reading, until after the sun goes down and my last page has been turned.
When I’m done, Rachel presents me with a list of my defects, and even though it includes words like “selfish,” “self-seeking,” “manipulative,” and “dishonest,” for some reason it doesn’t make me feel at all bad about myself. It actually makes me feel hopeful that I may be able to conquer the kind of relationship problems I’ve had my whole life, since long before I took my first drink.
“You haven’t been bad,” she says. “Just sick.” She tells me to go home, read through the first part of the Pledges book, and think about these defects.
“It’s that easy?” I ask. “I just think about them and then I’m done?”
“Done?” she asks, laughing. “More like just getting started.”
31
“Amelia, we already went through this—on our hike, remember?” Stephanie says, blowing dust off her keyboard. “You don’t have anything else to apologize for.”
I’m sitting in her office, bizarrely nervous considering I’m sitting in front of someone who I know loves me unconditionally. It’s my first time in the building since the day I fled Absolutely Fabulous, and I know that that’s where I’m going next.
“Please, just listen,” I say. And then I tell her that although I already apologized to her for being selfish, I haven’t changed my behavior at all—I’m still always calling her in the midst of a crisis and then abandoning her as soon as it’s over. I finish by saying, “I haven’t been treating you the way I want to be treated, and I want to start doing that now.”
Stephanie looks completely shocked. “Amelia, I don’t know what to say,” she says after a few seconds of silence.
“You don’t have to say anything,” I say. “Unless there’s something I can do to make up for what I’ve done.”
She shakes her head. “Can I hug you now?”
I nod and we both stand up and embrace. As we hug, I tell her I love her and notice that she’s crying. “You’re foul,” she says and we both laugh.
Next, I go upstairs, walk straight into Robert’s assistant’s office and ask if it’s possible for me to speak to him. His assistant, Celine, looks terrified, like I may be on the verge of pulling out an Uzi, but Rachel had told me that I wasn’t allowed to react to anyone’s behavior during this apology tour. I was just supposed to be loving and take whatever was dished out.
“Um, hang on,” she says, scooting quickly out of her office and just as speedily into Robert’s. As I stand there, Brian walks by, his head down as he reads a fax.
“Brian,” I say, and he looks up. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Not looking terribly surprised, Brian nods just as Robert opens his door, so we walk in and take the exact same seats we had the day I was fired. I waste no time—launching directly into how sorry I am for being such a self-absorbed, entitled prima donna. I apologize for acting inappropriately with the people I interviewed,