Walking on Broken Glass - Christa Allan [52]
I scanned the pages searching for the translated version of the offerings. Even Shakespeare editions had user-friendly translations. But the only words not written in French were to comfort the diners that they’d be relieved of having to factor a twenty percent gratuity because it would be automatically added to the bill. How was I supposed to know that taking two years of Spanish to avoid the French teacher—because he looked like he’d stepped out of a totally off-off Broadway musical about bad hair days—would return to haunt me? Was there no Mexican dish at this restaurant? Surely there would have been something politically incorrect about translating chimi-changas and flautas into French?
Dinner with Carl's parents: Carl's idea of announcing our engagement. I felt underdressed, over-menued, and outclassed. I prayed my internal squirming didn’t pulse out of my body, sending waves of discomfort across the white sea of tablecloth.
Mrs. Thornton lowered her menu as if she’d been playing an adult version of hide-and-seek and spoke to me. “Dear, would you prefer the Poisson?”
How should I know? Frankly, I’d prefer your son's hand not making its way up my thigh while I’m sitting across from you.
23
Question: What comes after sobriety and before week two?
a) Week one.
b) Weak one.
c) Week won.
d) Weak won.
e) All of the above.
In seven days, God created the universe, and I followed along. Instead of His day and night, I had the inside of the second floor and outside AA meetings and the coming and going of the staff. Plus the cafeteria food and the ice-cream-stocked refrigerator.
I didn’t mind the 6 a.m. wake-up calls. Most mornings they were a reprieve from Theresa's gargantuan snores. Breakfast was served thirty minutes later. I traded my normal face treatment time for sleep time.
After breakfast the group met to discuss urgent issues like who left magazines on the floor (Annie) or whose cigarette ashes continued to litter the floor and tables (Doug) or who kept hiding the remote control (the teenage duo).
No sign of Miss Nose Candy. The teens buzzed that they heard she hadn’t been released from third-floor detox.
After our mandatory morning mauling, we were routed to occupational therapy or group therapy or meditation time or exercise time before lunch. Now that I’d identified protozoan blots, brain-cramped my way through number sequences, and reassured the white-jacketed psych staff I wasn’t going to chain Stephen King to a bed anytime soon, I was cleared to start my occupational therapy sessions.
When I taught, occupational therapy meant I sipped wine in a bubble bath or released frustration by swiping my credit card. Was sobriety an occupation? If so, I was going to be painting my way to recovery with ceramic vases, ashtrays, and soap dishes.
After I splattered aggressive reds and calming blues all over my ceramic vase or whatever my object of the day might be, lunch followed. Always at noon. The predictability of that was comforting. And disturbing. I was disturbed by how comforted I was with routine. So much of what I thrived on as a teacher was wrapped up in the great unknown of each day. After losing Alyssa, my life's sameness smothered me. Every morning I opened the door to a steaming sauna, thick with grief and swollen with sadness.
Now, I welcomed the unsurprising complacency.
When lunch ended, we recycled the morning schedule offerings and ate dinner at six. Three or four weeknights of outside AA meetings, and weekends and other weeknights were in-house AA meetings. Ten o’clock lights out.
A schedule. A reliable robotic routine.
Then, in week two, the slithering snake of individual therapy sessions appeared in the form of Ron Palmisano.
At least the group therapy sessions were shared torture. Once Ron