NINE

Mitch

She finds one that meets Wednesday nights, which means a stony silent truck drive into Little Rock. We can’t join White Smoke’s AA because Elena’s convinced the town already knows the color of our underwear, and truth be told, I really can’t argue with that logic.

“She’ll be okay, right?” she asks, and the quiet crumbles, her voice chipping inside the cave of my ear. I eat the blast of cold coming through the A/C because she’s always too hot.

“She’ll be just fine.” Pam and Jimmy are watching Sela while Elena and I are at “the Spaghetti Factory.” They’ve been given the comprehensive guide on evening urine cleanup, which will most likely be Pam’s jurisdiction considering Jimmy doesn’t “deal with piss.”

But Sela likes Uncle Jimmy, smiles at him a lot because he acts like he was dropped on his head one too many times as a baby. I caught myself studying him earlier when Jimmy came into the house smelling of Dial soap and something stronger. I watched him take a coin from his pocket and place the dirty piece of metal behind Sela’s ear, and she laughed, a happy little clam. How easy it looked.

When we pull up to the Franklin Center, I cut the engine and survey the other cars owned by the miserable lot inside—the jokers I'm supposed to open my heart to. There’s an El Camino parked in front of us with a Jesus fish that’s grown feet stickered to the bumper. I imagine its sloped little head turning to me, saying, “Mitchie, you can’t do this.”

“You can,” Elena says, doing that mind reading thing again. We've dressed up in our “church clothes,” but this time Elena doesn’t say a word about my missing jacket, and I'm glad because I have a feeling we’re already overdressed.

Healing Haven, the place where the group meets, is in the Franklin Center strip mall. The “H” in “Haven” is going bad, blinking fresh light against Elena’s worry lines, and I get out of the car just so I don’t have to stare at them anymore. 

Taking her hand, our shoes travel over dead cigarettes and dried up gum. There’s a restaurant a few window fronts down—an Italian place—and people are outside stinging the night with their chuckling. Idiots, I think for no good reason as I pull open Healing Haven’s glass door. A bell rings over our heads.

“New member gets their wings!” a woman with rose-colored clown cheeks calls at us and lifts a Styrofoam cup in the air. Elena and I move in—guilt at our backs pushing us forward—and coming closer, I can see a name tag. “Peg.” I can also see this woman’s appearance is not normal because her lipstick and eyeshadow are permanently tattooed onto her face. We saw a special awhile back on 20/20 about makeup tattooing and drunkenly mused over the amount of real life clowns this new fad is encouraging. It's odd meeting one in the flesh. It's also odd thinking how I’ll never drunkenly do anything again.

“Names, names, names,” the woman says, blinking in rhythm with her words. For a moment Elena blinks back, probably trying to digest the woman’s eyeshadow.

“Elena Reynolds, my husband, Mitch.” Elena extends her hand, but Peg is busy with a styrofoam cup and a ridiculously big chocolate chip cookie, so she curtsies and bobs her head. She smells like food.

“Sorry about that. Blame it on Georgie and his delicious cookies,” Peg chirps, the last line so intolerably high-pitched, I'm sure even a deaf dog could hear it. A man in a fishing hat with a full-on Jerry Garcia beard tickles his fingers at us. “Elena, Mitch, welcome to the circus!” Peg says.

“I prefer ‘jungle.’” Georgie hands Elena and me our own cookie, these two with the letter “N” marked on the tops in blue icing. “For ‘newbie,’” Georgie says. “My theory is that anyone who takes a bite of my famous homemade Death by Choco-chips will ditch the newbie status and come on back next week.” I take a bite of it and try to smile even though I'm pretty sure it’s store bought.

“Mmm, so good,” Elena says, and I can tell she thinks it tastes like chalk.

We’re ushered to the front row. “Reserved for newbies,” Peg’s tattooed mouth whispers behind her cookie-crumbed hand, and the only other people sitting in this row are a young guy and girl with rings in their noses and their lips attached to each other.

“No PDA,” Peg barks, and the couple breaks apart, which is fortunate, then spots us at their periphery, which is not so fortunate.

“I’m Ricky,” the male one says. He gives me his hand, and it’s punctured swollen with holes in the wrists. The fingernails are dirty.

“Jessamine,” the girl says. She’s young, straddling somewhere between teen and young adult. She’s blonde, white, but Ricky isn’t. I can feel Georgie and his tray of cookies giving Ricky the evil eye from over near the snack table.

“Mitch,” I say. “So, what made you guys come here today?” Elena looks at me, and her face muffles her surprise. I'm point-proving talking to these burnouts, I know that, but I'm sure as heck not going to be lumped in with people who think face tattooing and store-bought cookies are good ideas.

Ricky laughs, “The cookies.”

“Starving, man,” Jessamine says, and I look at the plate in her lap stacked high with the letter, “N.”

“We hit the big ones, but this is our first time at this place. I just say stuff like my father beat me as a child, and they shake their heads, and then afterwards, we fill our plates back up.”

I have to admit, it’s not a bad idea, but I don’t say it out loud because Elena’s here and this is our ticket to normalcy. Hopefully.

She's been acting strange lately, and at first, I started to panic that she found out about me and Aaron, but it's more of a good kind of strange. She won't sit out on the patio with me anymore. And she made these packets for Sela, thickly stapled sheets she printed off the Internet that list activities to do with a seven-year-old. She's changing, and it's a good change, but it also feels like watching your boat drift away while you're still standing on the shore.

“They like knowing you’re as messed up as they are,” Ricky says and steals one of Jessamine’s cookies, crams it into his open mouth.

I consider this information. There’s a podium in front of us, and I imagine myself standing there, talking at a room full of screw-ups about having an affair with a man and raising a daughter with a disgruntled bladder. About loving people to the point of it seeming like I love nobody at all. I imagine talking about the wooden spoon, my mother's fear. I imagine I’d get a standing ovation, maybe even a crown. Mitch Reynolds, King of the Screw-Ups.

“Don’t listen to them,” Elena says. Her breath is silk on my neck. I glance over at the drugged-up duo next to us, Ricky’s hand sneaking around Jessamine's thigh. I mirror the movement, grab for Elena to see how that feels, but her eyes dart around, and her mouth whispers, “Stop.” And I know the inside of me feels nothing at all the way Ricky’s does.

Others come, and the air is noisy. Metal chairs scraping against floors, sneakers squeaking against the linoleum. There are eyes on us—a silent game of “Who’s a Newbie?”—and I try to keep the agitation from quaking my nerves. Elena is sitting as close to the edge of her chair as she can.

Finally, Peg and her tattooed face stand up on the mini-stage, her permanently mulberry lips leading the meeting with a fervor rivaling the one she has for Georgie’s cookies.

When it’s time to introduce myself I say, “Hi, I’m Mitch, and I’m an alcoholic.”

My liar’s heart begins to beat because I know I’m so much more.