Whittaker 01 The Enemy We Know (14 page)

“
Third,” I was ticking the various points off on my fingers, so angry they shook, “you can expect a ‘hissy’ fit any time I walk in to some bimbo playing footsie with Mr. Happy!”

“
You know what?” Robert’s face flushed an ugly burgundy. “You know why I wanted to talk to you? I wanted to tell you I agreed to sponsor the new guy. I wanted to share that with you. Instead, I have to deal with all this drama.” Not averse to his own drama, he punctuated the word by waving his hands in the air.

“
Drama?
” My voice rose precipitously. “If you paid any attention to what was going on in my life, you wouldn’t talk about drama. Just this morning—”

“
You know what?” he interrupted. “Maybe you need to take a look at the common denominator here.”

“
What are you talking about?”

“
Letty
has problems with a guy at work.
Letty
has problems with a girl at the club.
Letty
has problems with her boyfriend. How many meetings have you missed lately? When was the last time you met with your sponsor? Maybe you need to take a long, hard look at your part in all this. Even Sue, your own sponsor, is asking me what’s going on with you. And, I have to tell you, I’m starting to wonder myself.” Shaking his head, he exited, slamming the truck door.

I knew he was full of shit, but the part about Sue bugged me.

I sat for about ten minutes trying to calm down. Instead, I found myself replaying the scene, coming up with all the things I
should
have said. Sighing, I got out of the truck. The notepaper stuck to the bottom of my shoes like a trail of cheap toilet paper. I peeled them off, wadded them up and threw them back on his immaculate floor. Let Mr. Neat Freak clean them up.

Sue showed up a short time later. I was tempted to sit out the meeting and talk with her privately, but Robert’s comments rankled. I settled for asking her out for coffee after the meeting.

We went to The Brew Ha-ha which, although ridiculously expensive, was close to the AA club. Instead of the traditional, northern Wisconsin rustic decor, it tended toward funky eclectic and attracted a young crowd. Sue looked vaguely cranky and out of place as she perched in a modernistic, orange scoop chair.

“
Why are we here?” she asked, her gaze settling like a sleepy lioness on a group of teen girls two tables over. One girl with a hunk of metal skewering her lower lip tried a little alpha-female posturing, tossing her hair back and rolling her eyes, but the other three shifted nervously under Sue’s teacher-aura.

“
Because I haven’t talked to you lately and Robert said you were asking about me. He made it sound like you were worried.” That got her attention.

“
He did?”

“
Were you?”

“
Well, I might have said something like ‘How’s Letty doing?’ but if I was worried about you I wouldn’t waste my time asking
him
. I’d come straight to you.” Her eyes bore into mine. “Is there something I should be worried about?”

I filled her in on the hell Wayne continued to put me through all the way up to the rat-in-the-box incident, finishing with the argument with Robert.

“
I think he was just trying to put me on the defensive,” I concluded.

“
Sounds like it worked. But if it got you to come talk to me, I guess it could be worse. I bet you picked this place because it’s not likely that Robert and Chad and the rest are going to pop in here for a nonfat, soy latte.”

“
Exactly.”

“
You don’t have to tell me what the fight was about—unless you want to, that is. But I need to know if it’s something you might drink over.”

I smiled. “I can’t see myself drinking over this. I’m upset, but I’m not… I don’t know… I’m not
distraught,
you know?” Sue nodded. “And anyway, it seemed like we were fighting about two different things. I was pissed about Sandra, and he was angry that I hadn’t called him.”

“
Why hadn’t you called him?”

“
My phone was out.”

Sue crooked an I-don’t-buy-it eyebrow at me.

“
It was! Well, I suppose I could have used Marshall’s cell phone but—”

“
Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Sue put up a traffic cop hand. “Marshall?”

“
My boss. I’ve talked about him. It was his birthday last night, and I was his designated driver. My intern Mary Kate set up a surprise party at the bowling alley. So, yes, there was drinking there, but I didn’t drink. I was careful. I wouldn’t have gone if I didn’t think I could handle it, but it really didn’t bother me. At least, not in the sense that I thought I might drink.”

“
In what sense did it bother you, then?”

I thought for a moment. “For one thing, I didn’t like seeing what people look like when they’re drunk. I mean, most of them were just happy and a little silly. But one or two kind of slid over the line, if you know what I mean.”

“
Oh, I know what you mean all right. So, it was a reminder?”

“
Yeah. Of what I
don’t
want.”

“
Okay then. That’s good. What else bothered you?”

“
What do you mean?”

“
You said, ‘for one thing.’ That implies there were other things. What are they?”

“
You’d make a good therapist, you know that?” I shifted my eyes away. “I’m kind of attracted to Marshall.”

“
Mm—
hmm
?”

“
Not that I would act on it, of course.”

“
Oh no. Of course not.”

“
You’re mocking me, aren’t you?”

She sighed and shook her head. “Look, kiddo. You know how I feel about relationships in the first year of sobriety—you’re too vulnerable to make good decisions—and now you’re asking for a double helping? Let’s look at the big picture here, okay? What is it you like about Robert?”

“
He’s got a nice butt.”

“
Yes. I’ll grant you Robert’s nice butt.”

“
Marshall’s butt is nice, too.”

“
I’m happy for him. But we’re not talking about Marshall now. Keep to the point.”

“
All right. I guess… I liked how he picked me out of all the other girls.” I blushed at the admission. “He could have asked anybody out. Instead he asked me.”

“
We’re going to have to do something about your self-esteem. Why wouldn’t he ask you? As far as him asking anyone out, I guess he could have. But, believe it or not, there are actually some women who think Robert’s an egotistical pinhead.” She raised her hands defensively. “I’m not saying me, mind you. Just in general.”

“
You don’t think he’s an egotistical pinhead?” I teased.

“
Of course I do. But I also think he thirteen-stepped you, and that’s what pisses me off.”

Thirteen-stepping is a serious offense. Technically there is no real Step Thirteen, but the term is used around AA to describe what happens when someone—usually a man, but not always—preys on a newcomer, exploiting her sexually and sometimes financially. The implication is that the newcomer is being victimized, which didn’t fit with my view of either myself or Robert, and I said so.

“
Maybe not in any extreme sense,” Sue said. “But you turned your whole world upside down when you got sober—your way of thinking, your coping skills, your social network, and, most importantly, your way of thinking about yourself—everything changed. You can’t have that kind of upheaval and not, to some extent, be vulnerable. You’re a shrink. You know better.”

“
I’m a therapist, not a psychiatrist,” I nitpicked. I hated that she might be right.

“
Whatever. Being a therapist probably makes it harder for you to accept that you can be taken advantage of. I call it ‘Terminal Uniqueness.’ It’s that voice that tells you that you’re different from other drunks, that you can handle it yourself. Whatever ‘it’ is for you. Maybe it’s dating when you’re still trying to figure out the program, maybe it’s hanging out with your old drinking buddies at the bar, maybe it’s telling yourself you can drink just one, just a little.

“
But the bottom line is, Letty, that you are in a relationship with an arrogant jerk, you’re flirting with your boss, and Willard the Rat Boy is stalking you!”

I shuddered. I’d always hated the movie
Willard.

“
Look, kiddo. You need to make your own decisions here, but don’t pretend all this isn’t getting to you. That’s when you’ll get yourself in real trouble and try to find the answers in a bottle. Go back to the First Step and the Serenity Prayer. Figure out what you
can
control and what you
can’t
. Change what you can; let go of the rest.”

I smiled at Sue, reaching across the table to grip her hand. Blunt and ornery, but she had the gift of distilled wisdom.

Shortly after, I made my way across town to my apartment and my hungry cat. Sue had given me plenty to think about. I whispered the Serenity Prayer over and over in my cold car, across the parking lot and up the stairs to my place.

“
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.”

Straightforward, a bit of a cliche, but packed with good common sense—a lot like Sue herself.

Things I couldn’t change: that was easy to figure out. Wayne spread over that list like a malignant tumor. My stomach coiled into a knot just thinking about him. I anticipated lots of nightmares about rats. But I couldn’t change that, at least not tonight.

I could, however, change how I’d been reacting to his harassment. I’d been sticking my head in the sand, pretending that Wayne wasn’t getting to me, ignoring his escalating behavior. Sue was right. Although what she didn’t know was that it wasn’t just because I was a therapist that led me to cling to the illusion of control. At some point, I would have to look at how my childhood played into all this.

But that would have to wait. If I didn’t come to terms with the present, I might not have the chance to work on the past. Wayne had already shown his capacity for violence, for thwarting the law, and for invading the very heart of my life.

If I were advising a client in this situation, I would have insisted that she document every encounter and develop a safety plan. More significantly, we would have involved the police long ago.

Just the thought of bringing in the police made me sweat. Against my will, memories bubbled up like blisters on a burn.

The doorbell is broken, so they knock. Always a light sleeper, I wake in time to hear Ma’s robe whisper against the wall as she hurries to the door. Then the low murmur of a man. Ma’s voice in response, quavering, lilts a question. Her scream cuts through the quiet dawn.

I wet myself even before Ma rages into our bedroom, hands fisted in her hair, face naked without the coke-bottle glasses she always wore. She never even spoke on the phone without her glasses. Her pale blue eyes had shrunk without them.

“
They did it! Yes, they did! They finally went and did it. What will we do?
What will we do
now
?” Her voice clamped down on the last word, stretching it into an elongated howl of pain.

“
Ma’am?” The door swings open gently, a uniformed policeman fills the entrance. Behind him, shadows and movement indicate the presence of another.

Oblivious to everything but her private hell, Ma stumbles back and forth in the narrow aisle between my sister’s twin bed and my own, tripping erratically over the litter of our childhood: dirty clothes, naked Barbies, my overdue library books. Kris and I huddle under the blankets, shivering beneath the thin, cotton barrier between us and the craziness loosed in our soft dawn.

“
Ma’am? Please. Why don’t you come out here with me? Please.”

Ma moans, low and deep, and bends over at the waist. One hand clutches her stomach, the other remains clenched in the tangles of her hair. When Kris starts wailing, the shadow behind the policeman finally moves.

A woman. No makeup, plain hair pulled back in a ponytail, jeans and a grey sweatshirt. “Mrs. Whittaker? I’m Pastor Sue, the jail chaplain. You’re scaring the children. Come on now.”

Ma allows herself to be pulled out, the sound of her moans dopplering back from the living room. The policeman stands awkwardly, looking down at Kris and me.

“
Get out,” I say.

Siggy jumped feather-light onto the bed, gliding through the slanting moonlight, settling at the end of the bed between my feet. Trapped, unable to shift around, I lay still, sharing the night with my new friend. Desperate for distraction—from the past and from the malignant craving it awoke—I did the next best thing. I focused on someone else’s problems. Story of my life.

If my whole life had been upended, the same could be said for Siggy. For both of us, a change for the better. A life-saving change, in fact, but certainly something that took getting used to. A rich sound of contentment—Siggy purring—rose in the dark. I guess he dealt with change better. I fell asleep.

Typical male, Siggy was gone from my side when I woke early Sunday morning, but he joined me in the kitchen as I ate an English muffin.

“
So, what do you think I should do about Robert?” I asked.

He looked at me and slowly blinked.

“
I don’t understand,” I confessed. “Let’s do one blink for yes and two blinks for no. How does that sound?”