"What did you think about that?" Evil Ed asked.
"I don't know," I said.
"You could do a lot worse than that answer," he said. He said he'd come around some more.
When the hospital discharged me, I started going around to AA meetings with Evil Ed. I drove. Evil Ed said he didn't want to take his car; it might get stolen, whereas no one would covet my ratty Escort, which was true I guess but hurt my feelings.
We went to a lot of AA meetings, traveling around to church basements and storefront clubs. Some of the neighborhoods were rough, and the AA meetings reflected that, with drunks sleeping it off on ratty sofas and old winos trying to steal a couple of bucks from the coffee-money can. One time a furious fight erupted between two members over which of the AA founders was wiser, Dr. Bob or Bill W. Sometimes I was the only white guy in the room, which didn't bother me particularly since I often thought I was the only guy on the planet. There are levels of alienation, and mine was way beyond racial.
I wanted to drink, but I didn't. Evil Ed couldn't always make it to a meeting, and I started going to meetings by myself. I went to a meeting every day, sometimes two, sometimes three. There was a club called "The Into Action Group" that was within walking distance of my apartment, so I went there a lot.
And if I got restless, I could always go down to the bar and talk to Evil Ed. He was almost chatty on the subject of alcoholism.
"Drinking has got consequences," he said. "You get a tattoo when you're drunk, it's still there in the damned morning. I been sober nine years, and people say, 'You should get that tattoo removed or inked up so it's different,' but I say it's a reminder of the consequences of drinking, and anything that reminds me why I don't want to go drinking again is a good thing."
One day I saw a help-wanted sign on the door of a print shop, and I walked in, talked to the manager, and got a job on the graphics side, not quite the art director position I'd left at BC Graphics, but it paid the rent and required me to get up in the morning.
A couple of days before Christmas, Evil Ed's sponsor was celebrating at a big speaker's meeting, and we went and listened to him tell how he'd wound up in AA and how come he hadn't had a drink in thirty-two years. He was a small, India-ink-colored old man with white hair, and he wore a three-piece suit. After the meeting, Evil Ed and I went to a party someone was throwing for him.
I was feeling my usual alienated, awkward self, so I found a place on the sofa, out of the way of all the hilarity. The television was on, and the station was showing an old Jimmy Stewart movie called
Harvey. It was about this sweet-tempered alcoholic who is befriended by a giant rabbit that only he can see. I watched the movie with more interest and trepidation than it warranted. It was a harmless, mildly amusing piece, but I was so caught in its spell that I jumped when Evil Ed's sponsor sat down next to me.
"Still a little jumpy!" he said. He squeezed the back of my neck and laughed.
He leaned forward and peered at the television set. "Well no wonder you're jumpy. You're watching a movie about a
pooka! That's what they call that invisible bunny in the movie, say it's a mischievous spirit. They got that right! But mischief isn't a strong enough word. A pooka can do a world of harm. They are entities that attach themselves to alcoholics, and they can do more harm than a rabid dog. I've seen them destroy a man. They have great power to shift time and space. They can bend reality like a pretzel. It's not uncommon for a drunk to have acquired a pooka or two. Used to be, when I'd go see an alcoholic in detox, I'd get old Sally LaBon to come along with me, and she'd pray and work her potions, and once-you don't have to credit this-I saw a dog-like creature come howling out of a poor fellow's mouth and fly right through the ceiling. No one holds with praying out demons anymore. And I guess the program itself can rid a man of his demons, but I've seen times when some of Sally's righteous magic would do a world of good."
A pretty young woman came up and hugged the old man; such women have the power to dominate an elder's mind, and he forgot I was there. They got up and went off, to dance, I think, and I finished watching the movie. Despite its happy ending, I felt a sense of deep disquiet.
Christmas day didn't go well. I'd bought Danny some stuff that I knew he'd wanted, and he'd been really excited and happy with his presents, but I thought Victoria was acting odd, and when her friend Julie arrived with her husband, I figured it out. Julie and her man had brought another of Victoria 's office mates with them, a big-smiling, handsome-and-he-knew-it guy with carefully tousled, jet-black hair.
His name was Gunther, and when he walked in the door, Danny looked up and grinned and said, "Hey, Gun!" and my mood deteriorated. I decided not to stay for the meal, and Victoria accompanied me out the door to tell me that I needed to reflect on my selfishness and think of my son for a change, and Gunther came out, asking if he could be of any help. By throwing the first punch, I may have managed to break his nose, but I didn't win the fight. When I came to, I was lying in the snow on the front yard, a couple of yards away from my car in the driveway. The car's driver-side door was open, suggestively, and I got up, collected myself-no large bones broken-and drove away.
"What happened to you?" Evil Ed wanted to know.
"Christmas dinner with the ex," I said.
"Looks like the turkey got the stuffings knocked out of him," he said.
It took a week of stewing, of feeling ill-used and done-wrong, of wallowing in self-pity, but, finally, I picked up a drink. There was this little well-lit delicatessen with a liquor license, right next door to the print shop. It wasn't some dive filled with comatose barflies. It was clean and bright, you might even say wholesome. I drank a couple of beers there before going home one evening. It didn't seem like such a big deal.
But it's the first drink that gets you drunk, even if that first drink takes a few days to really kick in.
So I was drunk in my room in my underwear. I hadn't gone to the print shop for a week or so. After the second day, my boss had stopped leaving messages on the answering machine. My guess was I didn't have that job anymore.
The television was on, as it often was, babbling away in its news voice, a serious Iraq-Darfur voice over a blighted greyscape, muddy video-people moving around, digital zombies. I wasn't watching closely, but the voice droned on, the non-stop monologue of a demented relative. Then the voice turned hearty, and I looked up for the good-news segment, some cheery thing about toddlers helping the homeless or octogenarians climbing a mountain, human
interest as opposed to the tedium of human death.
A reporter was standing in front of the zoo in West Orange (I recognized the crenellated towers and little flags). I tapped the remote's volume control, raising the volume in time to hear her say, "… going home. That's right, these penguins, extremely rare, are on their way back to New Zealand where they will be re-introduced to their native habitat. The Fiordland Crested penguin's numbers have been reduced by… "
I stared at the full-screen close-up of this endangered penguin as it tilted its head back and forth, flashing those familiar eyebrows. I reached for the remote and punched the power button.
Where did this penguin dread come from? Penguins were not, generally, considered creatures capable of inspiring much in the way of horror and loathing. Was I losing my mind?
That was a question I rarely asked myself. I knew where my mind was. All right, in the years I'd had this mind, I hadn't always used it carefully, hadn't checked off every single 5,000-mile oil change, hadn't even done a crossword puzzle or read a challenging novel in the last ten years, but was there anything fundamentally wrong with my mind?