Again, Rachel, page 2
Maybe half an hour later, the weekend came to a close and our last instruction was to remain ‘non-verbal’ until we were off the property.
Upstairs, in the dormitory, as I threw my few possessions into my bag, my heart was lighter than it had been in a long time. The peace of meditation still eluded me – it probably always would – but, entirely unexpectedly, I felt absolved. It didn’t make sense but that man, that stranger, had cleared away some of the wreckage of my past.
One of the Lentil Boys returned my electronics then I stepped out into the chilly evening – and saw the man standing there, pretending to fiddle with his phone.
This felt awkward. Something good had taken place in that room and that room was probably where it should stay.
After a quick nod, I made for my car, slightly startled by the long, low, cream-coloured Merc in the space beside mine. It looked as if it had come direct from a seventies’ police show, very at home screeching through narrow streets and doing handbrake turns. It was hard to know if it was beautiful or just flashy.
‘Hey,’ I heard. I turned.
‘I’m Quin.’
Well, he sounded sure of himself. And he’d broken the rules.
Then I decided that it didn’t matter. ‘I’m Rachel.’
He walked up to me. ‘Could I …?’ he asked. ‘Could we …?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m not looking for, you know, that sort of …’
‘I don’t think I am, either,’ he said. (A lie, as it turned out.) ‘But whatever happened in there, it touched me, and it helped you?’
Even though less than an hour earlier I’d stared into his eyes for ten unbroken minutes, this was the first time I paid attention to the bigger picture. His brown hair was shorn tight and he was taller than me (I was five foot nine, this wasn’t always a given). On closer examination, his walking boots, his technical-looking top, the way his skin was pulled tight over his cheekbones were characteristic of those men who did lots of gruelling physical challenges. Men who always had three protein bars on their person and whose physical make-up was 0 per cent body fat, 87 per cent sinew, 13 per cent rage.
He didn’t look like he belonged here. ‘Can I ask something?’ I surprised myself by saying. ‘Why did you do this weekend?’
‘Because … I never feel like I’m done.’
I waited.
‘I want something,’ he said. ‘Then I get it. Then I want a better version of it. Or I don’t want it any more.’
Oh my God, one of those men.
‘My happiness is always over there, just out of reach,’ he said. ‘Mr Upgrade, that’s me.’
I actually laughed. ‘Well, no one can say you didn’t warn me.’
‘So?’ he asked. ‘What brought you here?’
Okay, here we go. ‘I’m in recovery. Meditation is recommended.’
If he responded with a blank stare, this burgeoning friendship would immediately hit the skids.
‘I’m an addict,’ I elaborated.
Baldly, he said, ‘I know what “in recovery” means.’
That was a good start because most people haven’t a clue. Then, when they get it, they usually run for the hills. I’ve often said there should be a Tinder for us Twelve Step types.
‘Have you been clean for long?’ And that was an excellent question, an informed one. He wanted to know if I was stable or if I was likely to slide and lapse.
‘Years.’
‘O-kay!’ Suddenly he no longer looked tightly wound. ‘So can I have your number?’
Why not? That was what I thought. What harm could it do?
He said he’d be in touch, then slid into his 1970s, flashy-stroke-beautiful car and roared away.
3
A client leaving before completing their six weeks was always disappointing. But this was the second time Simon had broken the rule forbidding sexual contact with other clients. And still, even as he was being bounced from rehab, he had that flirty gleam. He just couldn’t help himself.
‘You’re thirty-seven,’ I reminded him. ‘Too old for this behaviour.’
‘And you’re … what?’ He studied me with a dirty grin. ‘Thirty-five? Thirty-six?’
I’d never see my thirties again and he knew it. ‘Old enough to know I’m being played. Do your cheesy lines ever actually work?’
‘All the time.’
‘They ever work on women who aren’t vulnerable?’
At that, a shadow scudded over him.
‘If you don’t get serious about recovery,’ I said, ‘your addiction will kill you.’
He shrugged. ‘Live fast, die young.’
‘That option is no longer available, Simon. You’re too old.’
But he was impervious. He was going back out into the world and the first person he’d call would be his dealer.
Between fifty and sixty addicts a year passed through my hands and I cared a lot – maybe too much – about every one of them. If there was anything I could do to help Simon, I’d have done it. Letting him go was really painful.
I over-identified with my charges. Of course I did. I’d once been one of them.
Walking into the Abbot’s Quarter (in reality, just a draughty ex-dining room) for this morning’s group, the chatter was both anxious and giddy – rumours were hard currency in here. The possibility that Simon had been expelled would have unsettled them all. Intense bonds formed very quickly in rehab. That’s not to say that everyone got on – often they absolutely hated each other. But indifference was rare.
Chalkie was the first to notice me. ‘Sketch!’ he hissed. ‘She’s here.’
I took my seat – the second worst one in the circle. That was the bad thing about being late to group, all the comfortable chairs were gone. I’d have to endure at least two hours in this low-backed upright thing with the wonky leg – and do it without demonstrating discomfort. Any display of vulnerability would erode my power.
My little flock of ducklings was quiet now, flicking looks at the last empty place – where Simon would have sat – waiting for me to speak. But their response to this upheaval was information for me, so I assumed my blandest face and prepared to wait it out.
Would today be the day that Fedex delivered my new trainers, I found myself wondering. I’d only ordered them yesterday but sometimes they arrived the next day. Usually, though, it took two days. Occasionally, three. (That was hard. I’d be all geared up, my head generating pre-dopamine and then the cupboard would be bare …)
‘Someone say something,’ Dennis pleaded. ‘I’m sweating like a pig from the silence!’
Right, back to work! Dennis, an alcoholic who had arrived yesterday, was still locked tight in the fiction that there was nothing wrong with him. Apparently, he was only here to ‘shut up the wife’. Today – just like yesterday – he wore a wrinkled suit with soup stains on the trousers. His tie was askew, two buttons were missing from his shirt and his straining belly overhung his belt. A local councillor in the town he hailed from – one of those close-knit places in the middle of nowhere – I found him impossible to dislike.
‘What’s wrong with silence, Dennis?’ My voice was cool but the rocky chair leg, tilting me forwards, then backwards, as I spoke, definitely undermined me.
‘’Tis too quiet.’
Couldn’t argue with that.
‘Can I ask a question?’ Harlie’s voice shook. ‘Has Simon been kicked out?’
When he wasn’t romancing Prissie behind the couch in the rec room, Simon had flirted outrageously with Harlie. She’d sparkled beneath his sketchy charms and they were shaping up to be a situation. Maybe it was as well he was gone.
‘Simon has left,’ I said.
Distraught, she crumpled into herself. Giles, another smoothie with an eye for the ladies, shifted uncomfortably, perhaps wondering if he was next to be ejected. Working-class hero Chalkie twitched, primed to sniff out a miscarriage of justice. Roxy, leaving in a week, frowned with concern. Dennis watched the others for hints on how to react. And Trassa exclaimed, ‘You fancy him!’
‘And what if I do!’ Dennis was unable, as always, to resist making a joke.
‘Not you,’ Trassa said. ‘Harlie.’
‘I don’t!’
She did, though. I’d keep an extra eye on her over the next few days.
‘So Simon’s gone, gone?’ Chalkie asked. ‘Just thrown out on his ear? No chance to say goodbye.’
‘None,’ I agreed. I had to plant my foot firmly on the floor to stop my off-putting swaying.
‘Chalkie, why are you even bothered?’ Roxy asked, doing my job for me. They get like that when they’re nearing the end of their six weeks, thinking they know it all, it’s sort of lovely. ‘You couldn’t stand him, said he was “a middle-class prick –”’
‘“– corrupted by his own privilege”. Same as yourself, nothing personal, like.’ Chalkie’s blue eyes burnt with fervour. ‘But he’s still entitled to a fair hearing.’
Chalkie was a self-educated firebrand from Dublin’s inner city. I wasn’t supposed to have favourites, but if I had, it would have been him. Articulate, angry and compassionate (unless you lived in a leafy suburb, in which case he wouldn’t ‘piss on you if you were on fire’), he was in danger of burning up in his own rage.
With his star quality, he was great at galvanizing his community behind a cause – for example, he took on and won breakfasts for hungry school kids. He did a lot of good. But every now and then – often at the most important part of one of his campaigns – he lapsed and began taking heroin again.
‘Simon broke the rules,’ I said. ‘Twice.’
‘Well, maybe those rules are bullshit.’
At this, Giles began to chafe. A well-heeled cocaine addict in his mid-fifties, he was no fan of Chalkie and his causes. A dazzlingly successful, thirty-year career in advertising had imbued him with the conviction that everyone made their own luck.
‘“The most effective way to restrict democracy”,’ Chalkie said – he was quoting somebody, probably Noam Chomsky; it was usually Noam Chomsky, ‘“is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions.”’
‘Christ.’ Giles recrossed his lanky legs and hissed through clenched teeth.
Chalkie fixed his gaze on Giles. ‘Got a problem, man?’ He paused. ‘Ya tennis-playing prick.’
‘Chalkie.’ My voice was low but very firm. The patients were encouraged to go in hot and heavy when discussing each other’s addictions but gratuitous insults were not okay. ‘Apologize to Giles.’
‘Sorry …’
Giles inclined his head, to demonstrate pained acceptance.
‘… for saying you play tennis.’
Giles’s head jerked up again, colour flooding his handsome, bony face.
‘Prancing around in your white shorts, yelping, “Deuce!”’ Chalkie scoffed. ‘No wonder you got a taste for the snow. The shame, amirite?’
Laughter broke out. Nearly everyone loved Chalkie, that was part of his problem. He got away with far too much.
‘Sorry, Rachel,’ Chalkie said, with a grin. ‘Sorry, Giles.’
Abruptly, Giles began to weep. Entering his fifth week, it was textbook behaviour. His denial was stripped away, his selfishness detailed by everyone in his life, he’d moved through rage and was currently mired in grief.
‘All right, Giles?’ I passed him a tissue.
‘Fine,’ he choked, his face in his hands.
Okay, time for Trassa. Married for fifty-one years, with five children and eleven grandchildren, she projected cosy respectability, underscored by cardigans, shapeless skirts and reading glasses on a chain. A compulsive gambler, she’d admitted herself here to convince Ronan, her middle son – the only one of her children still talking to her – to pay off her latest round of debts.
‘Trassa,’ I said. ‘Your life story, please.’
It was the first written exercise the patients did and usually kick-started their thawing out.
‘It’s not finished yet.’ Her smile was sweet. ‘Might I remind you I’m sixty-eight, I don’t have the energy these young ones do.’
‘Have it ready tomorrow.’ I was stern. ‘In the meantime, why don’t you tell us again exactly why you’re in rehab.’
‘Well …’ A wide smile creased her soft, powdered features. There was something about her that always reminded me of a bap. ‘Ronan, my young fella, overreacted.’
I let that hang in the air for several long moments – then pounced on Dennis. ‘I’ve seen you having chats with Trassa. What has she told you?’
‘Hey!’ Chalkie jumped in. ‘Don’t make a snitch of him!’
‘No, you’re all right.’ Dennis was confident. ‘No one is snitching. Poor Trassa was unlucky, is all. Took cash out on a credit card for a dead cert on the Grand National. Never saw the bills from the bank because they sent them online. The interest mounted up – the rates are criminal, as I needn’t tell any of ye – and first thing Trassa knew was when debt collectors arrived at her front door, upsetting her husband, Seamus Senior. Who’s in a wheelchair.’
Yes, this sounded familiar. Except in the version I’d been told, the race was the Kentucky Derby.
‘By then the amount she owed had trebled. How could the poor woman pay it? She’s on a pension! One of her sons said he’d cover it, but that she had to “go to rehab”. Same as meself, we’re both here to please another person.’
A rhythmic, high-pitched squeaking noise was now emanating from Giles. He didn’t know how to cry properly because he’d had no practice. Before last weekend, he hadn’t cried in forty-five years. Really, he should have been howling and banging on the floor, mourning his lost decades and the trail of abandoned women and children he’d left in his wake, but he was too repressed. Still, it was encouraging that he was crying at all.
‘Trassa?’ I asked. ‘How much money did your son pay off for you?’
Sharply, she said, ‘That’s private.’
I gave her a look. ‘You’re in rehab. Nothing’s private in here. How much?’
I knew that Trassa had, without mentioning sums, given the impression that it was about fifty euro.
‘I took, I think it was … two thousand euro out from the cash machine.’
Shock bounced around the room. Two thousand? Even Roxy, who was far enough along to understand denial, hadn’t expected that.
‘Two thousand?’ I asked.
‘Oh, look, I don’t know.’ Trassa went the full-on, dithery granny. ‘My old head.’
‘It was four thousand.’ She knew it. I knew it. And now everyone else knew it too. ‘How did you get the credit card?’
‘The bank offered it to me.’
‘The bank offered it to you?’
Pink heat spread across her face.
‘You mean you applied for it?’ I said.
‘Yes, yes.’ She was desperate to shut me up.
‘In your husband’s name. Because your personal credit is shot to pieces.’
The mood in the room was dismayed – Trassa was regarded with great fondness – and this story didn’t fit their picture of her. Dennis in particular looked desperately confused.
At lunchtime I stuck a hopeful head into the admin office, hoping to see a Fedex box in the corner, but Brianna said, ‘Nothing. Sorry. What have you ordered this time?’
‘Trainers.’
‘More trainers? Anyone would think you were an addict.’ We both did fake-wheezy laughs.
Like any sensible person with a job, I got my online purchases delivered to work. Brianna was as good as a personal concierge. Ted disapproved: our personal lives shouldn’t overlap with our professional lives. If any of my ducklings stumbled across me gleefully tearing boxes open and shrieking with delight, it might be difficult to retain their respect in group.
But what was the alternative? Arriving home from work to find a little card bearing the dread words, ‘Go to depot’? I don’t think so.
Despite the disappointment, I got on with my day and around 5 p.m. I was in the office typing up the daily notes when my phone rang. As soon as I saw who was calling, my heart nearly stopped. What on earth …? Joey. Narky Joey? Why was he …? He would never be ringing for a friendly chat.
But mixed with the shock was curiosity and – madly – hope. My heart was pounding in my ears as I answered. ‘Joey?’
‘That you, Rachel? Listen, Luke’s ma died yesterday. He’s on his way home. Funeral’s on Friday.’
‘Luke? What … How …?’ I had so many questions. How had he been for the last six years? Had he got married again? Had kids? ‘How …’ I stammered. ‘How is he?’
‘His ma just died. That’s how he is, Rachel.’ Then Joey was gone.
At the best of times, Joey would never have won a Mr Conviviality contest. That hostility, though …
My hands were shaking so much that I needed to sit on them. Had that really happened? Did Joey just call me? Momentarily I worried that I’d imagined it.
‘You all right?’ Murdo gave me a sharp look.
‘Mmmmm.’ My lips felt numb. ‘Fine. Just … stuff.’
‘Sure?’
Silently, I nodded. Feelings flooded me: loss and longing and … yes, anger, and while it would probably be better if I didn’t see Luke, I knew I still wanted to.
Why had Joey called? Because Luke had asked him?
But that wasn’t very likely.
Unless … it was?
Should I go to the funeral? Or stay away? Back in the day I’d been very fond of Mrs Costello but we hadn’t kept in touch.
I waited to see if the friendly voice in my head had anything useful to offer. But all there was, was silence.
Really? I asked. Seriously?
Still nothing. So I was on my own with this. Maybe I should pretend that there’d been no phone call? Just push it down and get on with my life until Monday, maybe Tuesday, whenever Luke had left the country again and gone home.
But what if I regretted it? Missed the chance of seeing him? Or felt guilty about not paying my respects to a decent woman who’d been good to me?
I hadn’t felt this unravelled in – God, I literally couldn’t remember when. The right thing was to ring Nola, my sponsor and the Wisest Woman I Knew, clean and serene for almost twenty-seven years.
