Best Kept Secret: A Novel

The day before my meeting with Mr. Hines, I sit down with my coffee to look over my bills and determine whether or not it’s time to put my house on the market.

I can’t keep fooling myself. Money keeps going out and nothing comes back in. I’m not writing, and there’s no guarantee I will. If I sell, I can use part of the equity to buy a small, no-maintenance condo and the rest to pay off my credit card debt. That will at least buy me some time to figure out if freelancing is what I really want to do with my life.

Just as I put my hand on my cell, intending to call and talk with Jess about what I need to do to get ready to sell, the phone rings. I see Martin’s number on the display and immediately don’t want to answer. Curiosity gets the better of me, of course, and I pick up the phone. “Hello?”

“Mama?” Charlie’s voice is small, so unlike his usual brashness, it sounds borrowed from a much younger child.

Immediately, my body softens. “Hi, baby,” I say. “Are you okay? It’s so early.” There is a sniffing sound in my ear and I realize he is crying. “Oh, honey, what’s wrong?”

“I had a bad dream.” He sniffs in hard, blows a long breath into the phone. “I want you.” Nothing else matters—not Mr. Hines, Martin, nothing. Only Charlie. My son, wanting me. And I can’t be there. Dammit. This isn’t fair. There is nothing about this situation that is fair. Not to me, not to Martin, and especially not to our son.

“I want you, too, baby. I miss you so, so much.” I drop into a kitchen chair, my breath quivering as I speak. “What was your dream? Can you tell me about it?”

“Well, first there was a car. And then there wasn’t. And you were there. And Daddy. And a fire.” He snuffles again. “And I was scared.”

I sigh. “I’m sorry, sweetie. It’s no fun being scared. I wish I was there right this minute to give you a huge hug. A huge squishy hug.”

He giggles. “Cuz you’re a squishy mommy?”

“Yep. You told me I was. Remember?” A smile plays at my lips, relieved that he laughed, and thinking of how he felt pressed against me the night we spent at Jess’s house.

“Yeah . . .”

“I love you, Mr. Man. I don’t get to see you this weekend, but I will next week, okay? And you can call me anytime and I will call you, too. Did you get my cards this week?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, good. You’ll put them in your special book for me?”

“ ’Kay, Mama.”

“Love you, Charlie bear.”

There is a rummaging noise, muffled voices. I wait, steeling myself against another confrontation with Martin. I want to know how his meeting with Mr. Hines went. What did he say about me? About our marriage? Was he convincing enough for Mr. Hines to choose him over me? Does being Charlie’s mother matter at all, or does my drinking erase any meaning behind the word?

Martin comes on the line. “He had a bad dream,” he says.

“Sounds like it.” I pause, waiting for him to continue. “Thanks for letting him call.”

“He wouldn’t take no for an answer.” My first thought is: Excuse me, you told him no? But then Martin goes on. “I told him it was too early, and that he might wake you up, but he would not be deterred. He’s slightly stubborn.”

Again, I smile. “I wonder where he gets that.”

“Yeah . . .” Martin lets out a hard breath, a cross between a cough and a laugh. “The kid doesn’t stand a chance.”

“Nope.”

Again, I hear a muffled voice, Charlie’s this time, then Martin’s voice in my ear. “He told me to tell you he loves you.”

God. Has there ever been anything as difficult as this? “Thanks,” I say, pushing my fingernails into my palm to keep from crying. My chest feels hollow. A giant claw just reached through the phone and scooped out what is left of my heart.

When Kristin calls later that afternoon and asks me to go to a seven o’clock meeting with her, I find myself agreeing, thinking that after my call with Charlie, it isn’t a good idea to be alone. She picks me up at 6:30.

We pull into the parking lot of a church and head inside. I scan the room, but don’t see Vince, and find myself strangely disappointed. We sit in a circle of about twenty-five men and women, in various states of being here by choice, others by court order. There are old people and young, professional and those with clothes stained greasy from an honest day’s labor. There’s coffee and talk about God, only one of which I am comfortable with. The meeting has opened up for people wanting to share their experiences, instead of being called on by the chairperson. I can finally relax, no longer in danger of being asked to speak to the group about my experiences.

“Hi, I’m Kristin, and I’m an alcoholic/addict,” Kristin says when the chairperson opens the meeting. Her voice is fairly quiet, but it still manages to surprise me. She hadn’t told me she was planning to speak.

The room is still. I am amazed at how intently people pay attention to another person’s sharing in these rooms. In a bar, lots of people are talking, and nobody’s listening. In here, one person speaks, and every word is heard.

“Hi, Kristin,” the group responds, and I flinch. The response still feels clichéd to me, mimicked, perhaps, too many times in the media for it to appear substantive or genuine. No one else seems to mind it.

“Hi, everyone,” Kristin says. Her fingers are linked tightly together in her lap and she keeps her eyes on them. “It’s good to be back to this meeting.” She pauses, a nervous habit of hers, it seems, when she is unsure how to proceed. She looks up, smiles weakly at the faces around the room. “I came for about six months, and really liked it, you know? I stayed sober. But here I sit, five years later, with barely sixty days.”

The room erupts in applause at her pronouncement. The people here applaud at every announcement of sobriety—thirty days, one day, twenty-one years. Twenty-one years? I silently questioned the first time I heard such a long sobriety date. If they have to keep coming for so long, this program must not work as well as they say it does. I mean, really, isn’t there a point you finally get it, and don’t have to come back?

Kristin smiles again, then continues. “I know now that I’m in the right place. I’m going to do it the right way this time. I’m going to get a sponsor, I’m going to do everything she tells me. Even when she’s wrong. So, anyway, thank you. Thank you for still being here.”

“Thanks, Kristin,” the group responds. We listen to a couple other people share, and then the meeting closes with the group standing in a circle holding hands, reciting the Lord’s Prayer in unison. I keep my eyes open and mouth shut; the words wriggle like tiny metal shavings under my skin. I’m not religious, and while I’m told I don’t have to accept an organized religion version of a higher power—apparently, I can choose to use a doorknob if I want to—when the word “God” is thrown around these rooms like confetti, it’s difficult to imagine any other concept. I have a hard time feeling like I fit in with all of this. It’s a little cultish, really, the way they talk about turning their will and their lives over to some invisible spirit. It goes against everything I grew up believing about the self-sufficient woman I should be.

Kristin accepts several hugs from the women in the room, and though I am standing off away from her, I get pulled into a few embraces myself. One woman with flame orange tresses and a sequined, denim button-down shirt hugs me hard, then holds me out at arm’s length. “Trying to be invisible doesn’t work so well here, does it?” she says, smiling. Her candy apple red lips are not a good match to her hair color. She wears rimless glasses and dangling intricate silver earrings.

“Uh, um . . .” I say. I am not used to being called out on my crap, so this is my brilliant response.

She laughs. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell. I did the same thing at meetings when I first got here. I was scared to death that someone might talk to me.”

I make a few halfhearted protestations, and she just smiles more. “Do you need a sponsor, honey?”

“I don’t think so,” I say, finally finding a way to get the words in my brain to travel out of my mouth. “I’m in treatment.”

“Really? Well, treatment can’t last forever.” Leaning over a nearby table, she scribbles something on a piece of paper and hands it to me. “Just in case. I’m Nadine.”

Minding my manners, I take the paper, slip it into my purse. “Okay, well, thanks. I’m Cadence.”

“Isn’t that an interesting name?” she exclaims. “Creative mother, I guess.”

“Father, actually,” I admit, finding it very odd to be sharing this bit of extremely personal trivia with a strangely exuberant, orange-haired alcoholic.

Kristin rescues me at this point. “Are you ready to go?” she inquires, smiling at Nadine. “Hi, I’m Kristin.”

“Nadine.” She reaches over to hug Kristin. “Thank you for sharing, honey. I really appreciate hearing from the newcomers. I hope you find something here that keeps you coming back.”

Kristin returns her embrace. “Oh, thank you.” After she pulls away, she smiles again. “How many years do you have, Nadine?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“Wow,” Kristin says.

“If I can do it, anyone can,” Nadine says, winking. “You two take care, okay? We’ll see you next week.”

We wave on the way out the door, and I exhale as we climb into Kristin’s car. She looks at me as she turns the ignition. “What?”

I give her a look. “Nadine.”

She tilts her head, curious. “What about her?”

I push another breath out of pursed lips, snap my seat belt in place. “Nothing, really. She’s just a character.”

“Yeah, but she’s got a huge heart.” Kristin backs up the vehicle, looking over her shoulder, careful not to run over any of her fellow alcoholics. “I remember her from the last time I was here. I almost asked her to be my sponsor.”

“Why didn’t you?”

She throws the car into drive, starts to pull into traffic. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I didn’t do a lot of things. I guess I wasn’t ready.” It’s quiet for a moment, and then she continues. “Nadine said something once that really stuck with me. It’s the reason I knew I could come back. I mean, I was so full of shame, you know?”

I nod. Yes, I did know. Of course I knew. “What did she say?”

“She said, ‘We don’t shoot our own wounded.’” She glances at me. “I can’t think of anywhere else in the world you get that kind of reception after fucking up. It made it a hell of a lot easier to get help.”

I consider this. “What choice did you have, really? I mean, with CPS being involved and the DUI. Didn’t you have to get help?”

She is quiet, contemplating, then shakes her head. “No. I didn’t. I could have killed myself. Those were my options.” Her voice trembles. “I went with the one where my kids don’t have to grow up without a mother.”

“That’s a hell of a choice to make.”

“I know.”

We are silent for another moment. And then the words come. They are out of my mouth before I realize, in barely a whisper. “I had to make that choice, too.”

She reaches over, grabs my hand for the second time that night, squeezes hard, then turns the corner so she’s driving us the right way home.