Best Kept Secret: A Novel

The first half of May goes quickly, jam-packed with fun fests anytime Charlie and I are together: on the weekends, we go out for a cheap breakfast at IHOP, where I allow him to indulge in strawberries and whipped cream on his waffles.

“Do you mean it?” he asks, his eyes widening when I say yes.

“Yep,” I say. “Go for it.”

“Hey, waitress lady!” he hollers, frantically waving his chubby hand in the air.

“Charlie, shush,” I say, laughing. He is anxious, I’m sure, to get in his order before I come to my motherly senses. “They’re not going to run out.”

We don’t spend much time in the house. Using the discount Charlie gets as the child of a Microsoft employee, we hit the aquarium, the zoo, and the Pacific Science Center. We eat messy homemade burgers and lots of ice cream. I let him stay up late and don’t make him clean his room. He rarely misbehaves because I give him pretty much everything he wants.

“You’re turning into one of those parents you hate,” Jess said one Sunday afternoon we spent at her house. “Aren’t you worried you’re overcompensating a bit?”

I shrugged. “A little, maybe. But I don’t care. I have a lot to make up for.” I cradle a selfish and quiet hope that Charlie is going home and telling Martin how much fun I am compared to him or Alice. How much he wants to come back and live with me. His mother. I don’t know how to explain to my sister how compelled I feel to be in constant motion when I’m with Charlie. Standing still puts me in too much danger of my drinking catching up to me. I’m terrified it might suck me back in.

Jess won’t let it go. “What’re you going to get him for his birthday this summer, a Corvette? A yacht?”

I stuck my tongue out at her. I did need to talk to Martin again about Charlie’s birthday party. The last time we had dinner together, my son told me he wants his August party held at Bouncy Land—a popular, inflatable playground venue for six-year-old boys. When I’d dropped him off at Alice’s house that night, Martin was already there, waiting to take him home. We stood on the porch while Alice helped Charlie gather his things.

“Okay,” I said. “He told me he wants to have his party at Bouncy Land. I was thinking a Spider-Man theme.”

“My mom said he wants to have it at her house. Just a few friends.” The muscle above Martin’s left eyebrow twitched, a tic that only appeared when he was annoyed. “I’d like to keep it simple.”

What you’d like to do is not extend any effort and leave it all up to your mother. I took a deep breath before responding. “We can keep it simple at Bouncy Land. I’m happy to plan it. And it’s what he said he wants.”

Martin shook his head. “Not according to my mom. She’s been spending a lot of time with him, so I’m apt to believe her.”

And by extension, not believe me, Charlie’s mother, who is barely allowed to spend any time with him at all. Martin didn’t have to speak for me to know exactly what he was thinking. My blood began to simmer beneath my skin.

“Well, we have until August,” I said. I didn’t have the energy for this argument. “We can figure it out later. I’ll send you an e-mail with my ideas.” I already knew what cake I would make and the Spider-Man-themed decorations I would buy. I had in mind the kind of party the likes of which little boys dream.

When Charlie’s not with me, I try to write, to come up with something—anything—I might be able to sell, but it feels as though there is a logjam of words stuck in my brain. I go back to the very basics, utilizing techniques I learned in college for encouraging creativity. First, I type out two columns of random words on a page and print it out. Then, I draw lines linking two words together and see if an article idea emerges. The first two words I link are “tires” and “chocolate.” That’s a no-go. The next set is “firemen” and “salami.” The thought flashes through my brain that I might be able to scrounge up an X-rated essay out of that last combination, but erotica isn’t exactly what I want to add to my résumé. After a few more tries, I give up. I can’t get anything on the page. I wonder if my drinking did some kind of permanent brain damage—if I forever ruined my own professional abilities. Another failure I’ll have to endure.

I try to distract myself with AA meetings. When Andi first told me how many meetings I had to attend, I was incensed. “Are you kidding?” I said. “I have to do group, individual, and three meetings a week? Do you know how many hours that is?”

“Yes,” she answered, nonplussed. “How many hours a week did you spend drinking?”

She had a point. I’m grateful now to have something to do. A reason to escape my house. The meetings I choose to attend are large ones, fifty people or so, where I can sit a few rows from the back and have less of a chance of being called on to share. I used to sit in the very last row until I heard someone refer to it as “relapse row.” I try to blend in—not too much a part of things but not too separate. A couple of times I consider avoiding the meetings and signing my own slip with another person’s name just to avoid the humiliation, but I’m too afraid I’ll get caught. I’m unwilling to risk losing Charlie forever.

I do listen during meetings, but I’m not sure how much I actually comprehend. For the most part, the voices sound like the grownup characters in Peanuts cartoons: wah-wah-wah-wah. Occasionally, though, a certain story or phrase will pop through my consciousness, like the man who spoke of driving his car into a tree in his neighbor’s front yard. He came to lying in the grass a few minutes later, not remembering anything past leaving work that afternoon.

“I’d been in a total blackout,” he said. “So when I saw the cop car’s flashing lights approaching, the first thing I thought was, damn, they’re going to smell the booze on me. In my stoned state, I thought about parsley . . . how it’s supposed to clean your breath? I figured grass was the next best thing. So I took a mouthful and started chewing.”

The room erupted in laughter as he told this story and I thought, What the hell is so amusing? It’s not funny. It’s ridiculous and sad. The man was eating a lawn.

But he was laughing, too. He held up his hands in mock surrender, then dropped them to his lap. “I know, I know. But that’s where my drinking took me. Lying on the lawn, gnawing on grass like a cow, my neighbors watching in horror.” The laughing ceased, replaced by a sudden, somber silence. The man gave his head a quick shake before he continued. “I heard a phrase when I first got here, something about the ‘incomprehensible demoralization’ alcoholics feel. And that’s exactly what it was. I was demoralized beyond my previous understanding. I thought no one could possibly get how full of shame and pain and self-disgust I was. I lived in this dark, terrifying vortex. I thought I was unique.”

“Incomprehensible demoralization.” This phrase reverberated throughout my bones. It captured exactly how I felt about my drinking. About drinking in front of my child.

“I also didn’t know how to talk about how I felt,” the man went on. “I couldn’t imagine telling anyone how deep my pain went or talking about the horrible things I’d done.” He paused, and then seemed to look directly at me. “But then I heard something else. I heard that we’re only as sick as our secrets. And I knew that I didn’t want to be sick anymore. I knew that I was willing to do whatever I had to in order to get well, including telling the truth about all I had done. And it scared the hell out of me. But what scared me more was starting to drink again.”

“We’re only as sick as our secrets.” Another phrase that managed to soak into my mind and wreak a little havoc. What were my secrets? The drinking, of course. That was the worst. How bad it got. I didn’t want to talk about that. Certainly not the details—I could barely admit those to myself. Nor could I acknowledge how incompetent I sometimes felt as a mother. And a writer. And a wife. And a daughter.

Afraid that someone might encourage me to say any of this out loud, at the end of the meetings, I would zip out the door before anyone could lure me into too deep a conversation. The people I have spoken with are generally normal and nice, not the religious zealots I first imagined they would be, but still, I haven’t let any conversations get much past hello.

This technique works well for me until the morning I attempt to make a beeline for the door at the end of a meeting in the basement of a church in Fremont, a neighborhood not too far from my house. There is a swarm of happily chatting people blocking the exit, and I stand there impatiently craning my neck, looking for a method of escape.

“In a hurry?” a low, gravelly voice says. I look to my left toward the source of the voice and realize it is the man who told the story about eating a lawn. Now that he is next to me, I see that he is attractive, dark-haired, and in possession of mischievous green eyes. He is dressed in a black suit with a shirt and tie—definitely appealing in a clean-cut, businessman kind of a way. My thoughts flicker briefly on what his arms might look like out of that suit.

“Kind of,” I say, giving him a quick smile before glancing back to the doors. They’re still blocked.

He grins. “You make the fastest exit in the West at every meeting I see you.”

I stare at him, self-consciously smoothing down my curls. “You watch me?”

“It’s kind of hard to miss someone moving at the speed of light.” He winks and then laughs, a deep, vibrating sound. “I’m Vince.”

“Cadence.” I smile and relax a bit when I realize he’s only teasing. I reach my hand out to shake his and he takes it. His grip is quick, but firm.

“How long have you been sober?” he asks, tucking his hands into the front pockets of his slacks.

“A few months,” I say. One hundred and three days, if I make it through tonight.

“Did you get your ninety-day chip?” He rocks back on his heels, then forward to stand flat.

I shake my head, pressing my lips together. At every meeting, the chairperson asks people to announce if they’re celebrating a sober “birthday,” but I have yet to open my mouth.

“Why not?”

I shrug and give him a half smile. “I’m not sure, exactly.”

“Intimidating, isn’t it? Telling this room full of people you’re an alcoholic.” He smiles and the skin around his eyes crinkles. “Makes it all too real.”

“I guess that would be true,” I say. I don’t feel like going into a detailed explanation with a stranger about my doubts of whether or not I actually am an alcoholic, so I take the easy route and agree with him. I glance toward the doors, but there’s still no escape.

“It’s the middle of the day,” I say, wanting to change the subject. “Don’t these people have somewhere to be?”

Vince laughs again. “They have to be here. It’s sort of part of the deal for staying sober. I’m on my lunch hour.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m an electrical engineer.”

I cock my head and scrunch up my face a little. “An engineer in a suit?”

He chuckles. “I own the firm. Have to look sharp and fool everybody into thinking I’ve got my shit together.” He digs into his pocket, rooting around with his fingers. I hear the jingle of change. A moment later, he pulls out a handful and starts flipping through it. “Aha!” he finally says, pinching a bronze-plated coin between his index finger and thumb. He pushes it toward me.

“What’s this?” I ask, taking the coin from him.

“My ninety-day chip.”

“Oh, I couldn’t take that.” I hold it out toward him, trying to give it back, but he flaps his hand back and forth, refusing to take it.

“I’ve got five years,” he says. “And I like to pass it on. That coin’s full of good juju.”

“Juju?” I’m almost afraid to ask what this means.

“Mojo, energy,” he explains. “ ‘May the force be with you’ kind of thing.”

“Ah, I see.” I look at him and raise a single eyebrow. “Are you sure you want to give it to me?”

He bobs his head. “Absolutely. Three months was when I found my solution.”

“And what was that?”

“Coming here.” He winks at me again.

“Why haven’t you given it to someone else?”

He shrugs. “I’m not sure. I kind of carry it like a good luck charm. But I try to live in the moment, and it feels like the right thing to do to give it to you.”

“Well, then . . . thank you,” I say, unsure exactly how he could determine something like that. But it is a nice gesture, and he seems like a decent enough guy. “It was good to meet you.”

“You, too. I’ll see you around.” He waves, walks off, and finally, I’m able to find a big enough gap in the crowd to make it out the door.