Some Are Sicker Than Others (41 page)

“That’s just the disease talking. That’s what it wants you to think. You
can
be saved. You
can
repent. I can show you how. I can help you find peace and understanding. I can help you live your life again.”

Monty turned and walked away from him, across the room towards the door.

“Monty, if you walk out that door, I won’t be able to help you. I won’t be able to help you save yourself.”

Monty stopped and turned towards Dexter, and said in a cold, flat, unaffected voice: “I don’t need your fucking help.”

Chapter 28

Sarah

ABOUT half the house was still inside finishing their hamburger dinners while the other half was outside braving the evening chill. The ones who were outside were all huddled together under the glow of the space heaters with those grey hospital-issued wool blankets pulled up to their necks. They were playing a new board game, not Monopoly. They must’ve exhausted that game and were now on to playing Trivial Pursuit.

Dave was among them, but off to the side in his own metal folding chair, his head down, his body hunched over, an unlit cigarette dangling from his wind-chapped lips. He was still pissed off about what Monty had said to him. The kid didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. What did he mean he needed therapy? He didn’t need any bullshit therapy. He wasn’t an addict. He was perfectly fine. He wasn’t even supposed to be here. It was all a setup. Cheryl fucked him over. His own wife ratted him out. Why couldn’t the kid understand that? It wasn’t that difficult. Why was he having such a hard time grasping the facts? It was simple—Cheryl hated him. She was trying to get rid of him. He wouldn’t give her another baby, so she decided to move on to someone else. But she couldn’t just leave him. Oh no, that would be too civil of her. She had to take everything from him, so she could have it all to herself. Selfish bitch. She figured if she could get the courts to see that he was an unfit father then she could run off with everything—the kids, the money, the cars…hell, even the god damn house. And then what would he be left with? Nothing. Nothing but a bad leg and a shitty coaching gig.

But there was one thing Cheryl didn’t count on, and that was his resilience. He wasn’t just gonna lay down. He was gonna fight this thing. He was gonna prove his innocence. Cheryl wasn’t the only one in this town who knew something about the law.

Dave smirked to himself and took a deep drag from his cigarette, and, as he expelled the smoke upward, the payphone began ringing its one note song. Aw fuck it. Let someone else answer it. He was tired of having to do everything around here all the time.

On the fourth ring, one of the girls from the picnic table got up and skipped towards it, scowling at Dave because he wouldn’t move his legs. “Hello?” she said. “Who? Angie? Hold on a minute.” She turned to the group and asked if Angie was around.

“No, she’s not here,” Dave said. “She’s upstairs taking a shower. Why? Who is it? Who’s calling?”

“Uh…hold on.” The girl uncovered the phone. “Who may I ask is calling?” She turned back toward Dave. “It’s someone named Sarah. I think it’s her daughter?”

Dave jumped up from his chair. Holy shit. This was it. Finally, it was happening. “Give it to me,” he said. “Give it to me now.”

He tried to grab the phone, but the girl pulled it away from him. “But it’s not for you,” she said. “It’s for Angie.”

“I know, but I know her. I know Sarah. I’m her coach—I mean, I’m her dad.”

“What?” The girl looked at Dave suspiciously. “You’re not Angie’s husband.”

“Just give me the fucking phone.” Dave ripped the phone away from her. The girl looked mortified like she’d just been raped. “Asshole,” she said then gave Dave the finger and strutted back to her seat.

“Bitch,” Dave replied, giving the finger right back to her, holding it up until she sat down.

After Dave composed himself, he stamped out his cigarette, then lifted the phone and said, “Hello? Sarah?”

“Yes? This is she.”

“Sarah, it’s me. It’s coach, coach Dave.”

“Coach?”

“Yeah. It’s me. Where have you been, sweetie? Your mother and I have been trying to get a hold of you for like two days now.”

Sarah’s voice was barely audible. It sounded like she was crying, like she was sniffling into the phone. “Coach? What are you doing? Why are you doing this to me?”

“What? I’m sorry, Sarah, I can barely hear you. Hold on a minute. I’m outside. It’s really noisy out here.” Dave put his hand over the phone and turned to the people sitting at the picnic tables. “Can you guys please keep it down? I’m trying to have an important conversation.”

The patients looked up at him like he was a gnat on the wall buzzing around their group. They dismissed him with the wave of their hands. The same bitch who answered the phone even gave him the finger again. Dave gave her the finger right back and even stuck out his tongue. Cunt. Didn’t she have any courtesy? Couldn’t she see he was on the god damn phone?

He let out a deep sigh then moved his hand away from the mouthpiece. “Hello? Sarah? Are you still there?”

“Yeah, I’m still here.”

“I’m sorry, what did you say earlier? I didn’t quite catch it. It’s really noisy out here. These people are JERKS!”

“I said why are you doing this to me?”

“Uh…what…what do you mean?”

“Why are you harassing me and my mom?”

“What?” Dave turned his back to the group so no one could hear him. He covered his mouth and whispered into the phone: “Wait a minute, I’m not harassing anybody. I’ve just been trying to get a hold of you. I need you to come testify for me. I need you to tell the courts what really happened on the way up to Estes Park.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, you remember the other week, don’t you? Our trip up to Estes?”

“Of course, how could I forget? I’ve been having nightmares about it all week.”

“Yeah, me too. But, that’s why I need you to come testify. You can tell the judge what really happened—that the cops were acting inappropriately.”

“What do you mean they were acting inappropriately?”

“You know what I mean. They pulled me over for no reason. They broke the law and then they attacked me.”

“But you were out of control, coach. You were swerving all over the highway.”

“What? No, I wasn’t. I was driving perfectly fine.”

“Are you crazy, coach? You almost got us killed. You almost drove us off the mountain.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute”—Dave squeezed his eyelids shut. What the hell was she saying? He wasn’t swerving all over the highway. Why was she lying?

“Don’t you remember, coach? I was trying to get you to stop, but you wouldn’t listen. You just told me to go sit down and behave.”

“Wait a minute, that’s not right, that’s not what happened. You and the girls were cheering. You were singing and dancing and having a great time.”

“We weren’t cheering, coach. We were screaming. We were screaming for you to slow down. We were scared for our lives. I
had
to call the police. I had no other option. You were about to get us killed. You were about to flip the bus.”

Dave’s throat began to close. It felt like he was choking. It felt like someone was stepping on his neck. What the hell did she mean she called the police? He thought Cheryl had called them. That’s what Cheryl said, right? That’s what she told him at the jail. “Wait a minute, what do you mean you called the police? I thought Cheryl called them.”

“Who’s Cheryl?”

“She’s my wife.”

“I don’t know about that. All I know is that I called them, and some of the other girls did too.”

“What!?”

“What were we supposed to do? We were frightened. You wouldn’t listen to us. You wouldn’t pull over.”

Dave had to put his hand up against the wall to keep from falling over. He couldn’t see straight. Everything was going dark. What the hell was going on? Why was this happening? Why was everything getting turned upside down? Did somebody get to Sarah? Could it have been Cheryl? Could she have somehow put Sarah up to saying all of this crap? She must have. Who else could’ve done it? She probably went to the girl’s house. She probably talked to her dad.

“Please,” Sarah begged him, “stop calling here. Stop harassing my mother. Leave her alone. She’s sick. She needs help.”

“I’m not harassing her. I’m just trying to—”

“I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to use her.”

“What? No, I’m not.”

“Then why did you tell her we were all going to move in together?”

“I didn’t tell her that.”

“Well, she seems to think so. You must’ve planted that idea in her head. You know she’s not healthy, right? You know she tried to commit suicide.”

“What?”

“Yeah. She tried to overdose on pills in front of our driveway. We were lucky my dad noticed her car out there and called an ambulance. She could’ve died that night. She could’ve killed herself.”

Dave’s legs became weak. He was about to fall over. He staggered over to his chair and carefully slunk down. “I didn’t know that,” he said, bowing his head forward, his voice lowering to barely a growl.

“Well, now you do, so please stop harassing her. She doesn’t need to be messed with. She needs to get better.”

“Wait Sarah, I told you I’m not—”

The phone went dead before Dave could finish his sentence. Sarah had hung up on him before he could say anything else. Almost immediately, the tightening in his stomach began to solidify like a vat of concrete had been poured down his throat. He slowly hung up the phone as if it was a ninety-pound dumbbell, the weight of the whole conversation suddenly shifting to his arm.

After he got it on the hook, he looked out across the patio at all the other patients laughing, talking, and playing their stupid little game. The bitch who originally answered the phone was standing right beside him, a Monopoly playing card resting in her outstretched palm. “Here,” she said, “take it. We’re done playing Monopoly. Besides, it sounds like you’re going to need this a lot more than me.” She handed Dave the card then smiled, flipped her hair outward, and strutted back to her table and started whispering to her friends and giggling at his expense.

Dave looked down at the card. It was pink with a picture of a man dressed in black and white striped prison scrubs. Dave recognized it right away. It was the
Get Out of Jail Free
card.

Chapter 29

Monty’s Fourth Step

AS Monty walked down the hall, he could hear Dexter shouting after him, his voice a pathetic plea penetrating through the paper-thin walls. But Monty didn’t stop—he kept on going, down the kitchen steps, and across the meeting hall. Where was he going? What was he doing? He didn’t know. All he knew was that he had to get away—away from all this bullshit about God and higher powers, away from Dexter, away from AA.

He slid open the door and stepped out onto the back patio, then put on his gloves and pulled up his hood. The patients were outside all bunched together, sitting under the orange glow of a tall umbrella-shaped space heater. They were laughing, talking, and sucking down cigarettes, playing some kind of board game that was spread out in the middle of the green picnic table. Monty kept his head down and his eyes forward and marched across the yard towards the trailer.

When he got back into his room, he shut the door behind him, then took a deep breath and leaned his head against the wall. He kicked off his shoes and unzipped his jacket, pulled off his gloves and pushed off his hood. He got in bed and buried his face underneath the pillows then pulled the covers up over his head. As he shut his eyes, he tried to focus on nothing—nothing but this room, nothing but this bed. But he couldn’t focus. It felt like a weight was crushing down on top of him, like a fucking garbage truck was rolling over his chest. He wanted to get up and push the truck off of him, but he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t scream. All he could do was lay there, staring up at the ceiling, hearing Dexter’s words play over and over again in his head:

You didn’t love her, Monty. You only thought you did because she made you feel worthy…she made you feel safe…she made you feel loved. But it wasn’t love. It was only dependence. It was swapping one addiction out for another
.

Was Dexter right? Was it just dependence? Was he just using Vicky as a way to cope without alcohol? So what if he was? He needed her. He needed Vicky. She was the only person in his life who still wanted to be around him. Everyone else was gone, because he’d turned his back on them. His parents, his friends, his sister, his brother—he pushed them all away, because he was too ashamed of all the horrible things he’d said and done. But Vicky was different, because she didn’t really know him. She didn’t know that he hit his mom in the face and sent her to the hospital. She didn’t know that his dad called the cops and had him locked up in prison. She didn’t know any of this, because he never told her, and, in exchange, Vicky never told him anything about herself. But, could you love someone you didn’t know? No. But so what? That’s the way they liked it. It gave them a chance to start over and be different people. They didn’t have to face their shame and all those poisonous memories—they could just put them on a shelf somewhere and try to move on. So what if it wasn’t real love? So what if they were codependent? They kept each other sober and that’s all that mattered, right?

No, wait…that’s not true. Vicky wasn’t clean. She’d been using. Had she been using the whole time? Why didn’t she tell him? Was she too ashamed? Was she afraid he’d be disappointed? Was their relationship that fragile that she couldn’t even come and talk to him? But why? Didn’t she know that he’d never judge her? Didn’t she know that she could trust him?

“Fuck!”

Monty screamed as loud as he could into his pillow until his vocal chords felt like they’d been cut open with a saw. He shot up in bed and ripped off the covers and stood rigid and confused in the center of the room. He needed something to smash, something to grab on to, something to crush, something to rip. He paced back and forth beside the mattress, his fists clenched, his shoulders bowed outward, the adrenaline of self-hatred pumping through his muscles.