Authors: Athol Dickson
C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-S
EVEN
W
ITH ONE THIMBLEFUL OF RED WINE
, it was as if every drop of alcohol that Riley Keep had ever drunk returned to him. His stomach was a lathered, rabid dog howling for escape, his head a raging storm of whirling razor blades, his pasty skin a fetid, loathsome shroud. Every other hangover Riley Keep had ever suffered was a mother’s loving touch compared to this. It was two days before he knew Hope lay beside him in the hospital, and three before he cared. But it passed; by the grace of God it passed and in its place the awful urge returned.
How it could be possible he did not know, but even as the torture finally began to ease he felt a masochistic lust for alcohol. Even as they lay together for the balance of the week, talking, healing, rediscovering each other, even then he warned Hope he might fall again, probably would fall again from time to time, because the temptation to put faith in discipline was strong.
She accepted this, of course. When had she been unwilling to accept his weakness? It was his maddening attempts at strength she could not bear. And if he sensed a subtle sadness in Hope at the thought of his falling now and then, even so he felt a sorrow in himself at the thought of life without just one more drink. But this sadness was no weight to press him down. On the contrary, Riley Keep now took solace in his suffering, for he knew it offered holiness.
Many ripples rolled across the world from Dublin, Maine. At the judge’s order, Dr. Dale Williams’s video was made available to the public. Within a day it had been seen by nearly a third of the nation. The price of stock in Hanks Pharmaceuticals plunged as investors rushed to sell their shares before a federal court could issue an order reverting ownership of the cure’s development and marketing rights to the First Congregational Church of Dublin, Maine. In many cases, shares were sold out of pure disgust. While the video was not enough to get Lee Hanks arrested on its own, both the United States Department of Justice and the Brazilian authorities announced new investigations into the events it described. With the story of the murders in Brazil now common knowledge and the investigation under way, Riley Keep believed he need not fear Lee Hanks. And although Riley did not know if he and Hope would be allowed to keep their fortune, they decided if they did it would be spent on Dublin Township and the homeless, every penny. No matter what was done about their millions, Riley hoped to convince Henry Reardon to go ahead and cash the checks that he had given to the church anonymously, and he had the satisfaction of knowing that the rights to his part of the deal with Hanks Pharmaceuticals had already been conveyed by Dylan’s paperwork in the offering basket, much as Willa had originally desired.
International investigations, miracle cures, and massive wealth were nothing next to Riley’s newfound place among the living. Bree came to the hospital every day, the pregnancy showing unmistakably now, her expanding belly awkwardly displayed by hip-hugging jeans and short tops. Riley hesitantly suggested that she might consider trying some of her mother’s looser, larger blouses, and to his surprise she did. Throughout that first week as he watched Bree speaking with her mother about babies, Riley thought of many things he wished to say. In time he found the courage to offer his opinions as a father, and once, when Bree asked why she ought to do as he suggested, he replied, “Because I’m right.” At that, Bree had fixed her solemn almond eyes on him, and he had shrugged and said, “Well, I
am
,” and she had laughed and squeezed his hand.
By Thursday Riley’s weakness passed. They discharged him from the hospital on Friday. Hope insisted on going too, with Bree and Riley helping her to the Pontiac. Riley drove them through the wounded town and up the driveway at Hope’s house. When they entered through the mudroom and saw the rock-strewn kitchen, Riley surveyed the damage and said, “It wasn’t their fault. They never fell away like I did.”
Hope seemed to know he did not mean the savages who had done the damage at their feet. She seemed to know he was thinking of the damage in a different jungle, years ago and far away. She said, “No, they never fell at all.”
Riley’s weak eyes lost their focus for a moment, looking past the stones and broken glass on the kitchen floor, seeing himself in another shattered world, assuming the worst about Waytee and the others. How he wished he could apologize. He said, “I miss them all so much.”
“No need. They’re waiting for us, and we’ll be there soon enough.”
Riley smiled.
Hope and Riley Keep slept in the same bed that night, holding hands. On Saturday, with Bree helping, Riley began replacing windows at Hope’s house— their house. He was strong enough, but more than once he had to pause until a fit of shaking passed, and no food he ate could fill the constant emptiness within. Each time the urge began to spread beyond his boundaries, Riley thought of thorns and crosses and he confessed his rediscovered weakness with a whispered, “Rescue me.”
He was empty, and it made him weightless, and he prayed with all his heart to be like that until the day he died.
Sunday came, his first full week of true sobriety complete. The Keeps arrived at church together, the alcoholic with his crippled wife and pregnant daughter, and they did not stop in back but helped each other to a pew up near the front, where a beaming Henry Reardon watched as Riley sat with Hope and Bree, who were not just inside Riley’s head anymore but lived real lives out beyond him now, seeing real things and breathing true air, on his left and on his right, singing ancient hymns. Nothing pressed him down. He thought of sunrises on the Atlantic and the harbor at the center of his hometown and bridal gowns and belated christenings in that very place where he was sitting. He savored the familiar lofty space above him, the firmness of the pew beneath him, the smells and sounds and dimly recognized people, and a loving wife and child who lived in total independence of his fantasies. Nothing of consequence outside of Riley Keep had changed. He was still addicted to his sins. He could still go from mourning for his friend and longing for his wife and child to lusting for good whiskey in the time it took to sing a hymn. But Riley was no longer dead; his ghostly days were over, and as Hope passed the silver tray, as he took the grape juice in a shaking hand and passed the tray to Bree, Riley praised his maker for an answered prayer, because here at last was something truly good to drink.
A
FTERWORD
W
HEN
T
HE
C
URE
WAS FIRST PUBLISHED
, some people wondered why Riley Keep would deliberately choose to drink the Communion wine in the end. Why would anyone voluntarily return to the living hell of alcoholism? And why would I present that as if it was a good thing?
For artistic reasons, it’s usually best to let a novel speak for itself. In this case however, with apologies to literary purists everywhere, I think maybe a few words of explanation are in order.
All around the world people say “nobody’s perfect” as if it were a law of nature or a self-evident fact. Some of us may seem less morally flawed than others, but we all know the difference is only a matter of degree. No matter how kind and caring and good we may appear to be, from time to time we all deliberately choose to do something that we know is wrong.
Most religions claim we can live moral lives if we so choose. But if that were true wouldn‘t somebody, somewhere, choose the right thing every time? “Nobody’s perfect” is true the same way “what goes up must come down” is true. Like gravity, and like the urge behind Riley Keep’s alcoholism, when it comes to morality there are forces at work beyond our control. Nobody chooses goodness all the time, because nobody can.
Much as a drug-addicted mother will give birth to a baby addicted to those same drugs, we are all born addicted to bad choices. Take two toddlers and put one desirable toy between them. Will you see a demonstration of selfless generosity? Will one of them offer the toy to the other? Not likely. Innocent though we’d like to think they are, the bigger, faster toddler will end up with the toy and the other one will throw a fit, as every parent knows.
When I wrote about Riley’s alcohol addiction, all of this was on my mind.
The Cure
is not just about one man’s struggle against alcoholism. It’s about every person’s struggle against the addiction to self-centered immorality that afflicts the human race.
Most religions focus on the symptoms of our addiction. The assumption is, if one can control the behavior, one has solved the problem. To be a good person, one has only to act like a good person. But every alcoholic knows that isn’t true. The addiction remains, whether one drinks or not.
We also try to solve this problem with science. From time to time the headlines announce cures for various addictions, but there is no such thing. There is only the replacement of one symptom with another. Nicotine patches instead of cigarettes. Methadone instead of heroin. We can “cure” gluttony with stomach stapling; we can “cure” a pornography compulsion with filters on computers, but no human invention could cure us of the reason those addictions exist in the first place.
For that, we don’t need religion, and we don’t need science. We need a miracle.
In Second Corinthians Saint Paul famously admits he has something he calls “a thorn in my flesh,” but while Paul is wise enough to ask God to remove it, Riley Keep turns to technology instead. And at first the technology seems to work because Riley no longer needs to drink. But is he really cured?
No, he remains vulnerable. One sip of alcohol can put him right back where he was. So while the external evidence of Riley’s addiction is controlled, the internal cause—the thing that made him drink in the first place—remains unchanged. This is literally true of alcoholics who have not had a drink for decades. It’s literally true of everyone.
In his celebrated Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says God doesn’t merely want us not to murder; He also cares about the anger in our hearts that causes murder. He says God doesn’t only care about adultery; He also cares about indulging in the hidden, selfish lust in our hearts that leads to adultery. Jesus says this so we can understand that he didn’t sacrifice himself on the cross to pay the penalty for our immoral choices; He came to save us from the broken thing inside that forces us to make immoral choices in the first place. He came to give us peace.
Because of his alleged cure, Riley isn’t drinking anymore, yet he’s not at peace. Riley carries an overwhelming sense of guilt in spite of his sobriety, as so many “dry drunk” alcoholics do. He often says he feels “weighed down”. And what does he do about that? He works hard to try to make up for all the bad choices in his life.
Countless good deeds have been done for the wrong reason. It’s good to do our best to make things right with those we’ve harmed, but Riley does it for his own sake, to get out from under the “weight.” So all his efforts to do good amount to nothing. Indeed, they’re worse than nothing; they actually cause more damage. His wife Hope is suspected of taking bribes, his daughter is pregnant out of wedlock, the town is dying, and all because “When I want to do good, evil is right there with me,” as Saint Paul said in the book of Romans. Then, finally, when willpower and religious rules and technology and good works have all failed, with the town in ashes, Hope in the hospital, Willa dead, and Riley in jail for murder, at last we come to this:
“He thought about the weight that never lifted no matter what he did. Sober, drunk, broke or flush, in love or alone, it did not matter. And suddenly he realized what it was he had forgotten in a clearing choked with carnage seven years ago, the reason for his incapacitating weakness. When I am weak, then I am strong.”
That last sentence is a Bible quote. It means Riley finally understands his problem. The miracle he needs won’t come while he’s pretending that he doesn’t need it. But how can he stop pretending, now that he is sober (on the outside) and the richest man in Maine?
For Riley, the answer lies in drinking the Communion wine, in voluntarily acknowledging the fact that his addiction still remains, in literally becoming weak enough to genuinely accept God’s amazing grace.
In writing this ending, of course I’m not suggesting alcoholics ought to drink. Heaven forbid that anyone should take Riley’s choice literally. It’s a literary metaphor, expressing the fact that his drinking is caused by a spiritual problem, so he needs a spiritual solution.
This is old news to anyone already working the Alcoholics Anonymous program. After all, step one in the program is “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol,” and step two is “We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
Still, for some readers Riley’s choice may smack of taking God for granted, much like a drunk who continually gets into trouble because he has a friend or family member who enables that behavior by coming to the rescue. But this misses the point.
When Saint Paul tells us he was given a thorn in his flesh he doesn’t tell us what it is. He seems to omit that information intentionally, so we can all relate to his circumstances. Paul asks God three times to remove his thorn, but God explains that Paul is better off with it in place. The thorn—whatever it may be—is a constant reminder that Paul is powerless without God. It reminds him to stay humble, to admit his own willpower isn’t strong enough to overcome his affliction, and to focus instead on help from a Power greater than himself. So as much as it hurts, Paul accepts his thorn. In fact, he boasts about it. It is this very event that leads him to write those famous words: “When I am weak, then I am strong.”
I was thinking about Paul’s thorn when the idea for
The Cure
came to me. I asked myself, “If someone had offered an instant cure for Paul’s problem, would he have taken it in spite of what God said? And if he did, what would have happened next?” I decided such a “cure” would have made life even more miserable for Paul. I decided I would rather live with the humiliating weakness of my own addiction to immorality, than suffer from the lonely delusion that I had no need for God. And then I decided to write about a man who came to that same conclusion.
- Athol Dickson
Laguna Niguel, California
May 3, 2012