Walking on Broken Glass - Christa Allan [38]
Whatever this was, it was no longer a church. The building had been through some conversion of its own. It looked like one of those ranch-style houses built decades ago for families fleeing the inner cities. An unimpressive steeple clung to the roof. A whitewashed plaque had been nailed over a larger wooden sign near one of the paneled double doors. The word Serenity had been blow-torched on by someone with the generic cursive handwriting of a cake decorator.
If my friends could see me now.
College graduate.
Teacher of the Year.
Wife of a Corporate Vice-President.
Alcoholic.
The door swung open. Smoky cigarette ghosts beckoned from the alcove.
“’Bout time ya got here. The meeting ain’t gonna wait for you, Miss Thing.” Theresa's coif-of-the-day, a fountain of hair sprouting from the top of her head, waved me in.
No one warned me I might need a personal oxygen tank to survive my first AA meeting. I thought I’d follow Theresa into the room, but the smoke-heavy haze parted and swallowed her. I looked around for Matthew, but he had stopped to talk to some guy whose penny-colored dreadlocks formed a spongy curtain around his face.
Two long, brown tables surrounded by a jumble of folding chairs were end to end in the middle of the room. Against two of the walls were more folding chairs. No one was sitting. People were clumped around the room, but most of them hovered near the table that held three coffee pots. Frequently, a medley of voices and laughter would break through the surface. The faces were strangely familiar. How could I possibly know anyone here other than my little bizarre busload from rehab?
If I thought goofy-looking humans in varying stages of stupidity filled AA meetings, then I’d been reading the wrong books. These people weren’t dressed in clothes snatched from the bottom of a Goodwill bag. They weren’t gathered in corners sharing markers to write “I’ll work for food” signs on torn pieces of refrigerator boxes. They didn’t reek of stale gin and tonic, didn’t stumble, wail, or gnash their teeth. A youngish woman with a Coach bag slung over her left shoulder carefully stirred her coffee and nodded slowly as a suited, square-faced man read to her from a paper he held. A group of women, some wearing J. Jill linen outfits, the others in designer jeans and polo blouses, laughed as a petite woman in their circle demonstrated what I hoped were dance moves.
Vince and Benny blended in with a swarm of teens who could have just walked over from a high school or college campus.
I’d expected to feel displaced. But I felt more relaxed than I did the first time I walked into the Flower Estates Country Club to meet Carl's parents for dinner. I’d obsessed for days about what to wear and then finally dropped too much money on strappy black BCBG heels and an ocean blue raw silk bubble dress from Anthropologie. Until that night, the closest I’d been to the Holy Grail of private clubs that limited memberships to families with three-syllable names was billing them for plumbing supplies they ordered from my father's hardware store.
But that night at their club, my initiation into Thortons’ inner circle was as comfortable as open shower stalls at summer camp. Judging by the clinical stares of some members dining in the clubhouse, I felt sure I must have dragged sheets of quilted bathroom tissue on my shoes as I walked to the table.
Later, Carl admonished me. He said I only imagined their disapproval. “Whatever it is you’re feeling is more a reflection of what you think of yourself than what people here may think of you.” Even so, I immediately excused myself to find refuge in the ladies’ room where I checked my heels and readjusted my pantyhose. I wished I could have stayed in there, chatting with Peggy, the kind attendant who handed out paper towels so the ladies wouldn’t have to exhaust themselves by pulling them out of the dispenser.
A few years later, as Mrs. Carl Thornton, I’d been granted the privilege of membership. One of the first club events Carl and I attended