Chapter 47 Cord
Cord
“Honey, I’m not saying I don’t believe you. But she didn’t call you in a pass.” The guard was bored and her fingernails were ruby talons with diamond chips.
“I love your nails,” said Cord.
“Appreciate you,” said the woman.
“You know what?” said Cord. “I’m trying to surprise my mom for her birthday.”
“I see you’re getting that party started,” said the guard, staring pointedly at the can of beer in Cord’s crotch.
“I don’t have a phone to call her,” said Cord. “Can I use yours?”
“I just told you, honey: She’s not answering her phone.” Cord loved this woman’s accent. He was unreasonably gleeful to be back in Georgia. “Listen. I can park in the public lot and walk all the way to Wiley Bottom Road,” said Cord, “or you can let me in.”
“I sure am sorry, honey. You have a good one, now,” said the woman.
Cord gritted his teeth, reversed loudly, then spun around to park outside Publix, a grocery store that had five times the amount of fried chicken parts for sale as his Manhattan grocery store, which almost begrudgingly offered only organic, flash-frozen tenders.
Cord left his suitcase in the car, grabbed two beers, and began to walk, taking the forested golf cart path that skirted the guardhouse.
The Savannah night was pleasant. Cord hadn’t seen his mom in a long time.
He knew he had to quit booze again; he knew he would.
He’d have to go to all the goddamn meetings, recite all the platitudes.
He could skip Step One—he understood his life was unmanageable.
It was always Step Two that tripped him up.
Why, oh, why couldn’t he accept that there was a power greater than himself?
Cord believed, at his core, that if he didn’t handle everything, from the Sweethearts IPO to paying the bills to working out at precisely every morning at six a.m., he—and those he loved—would be fucked.
And he had turned out to be right—here he was like a cat burglar breaking into his mother’s gated community, drunk and dumped.
And probably fired, though he wasn’t sure if he could be fired—but he guessed he was about to find out.
Cord had once had an Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor, Handy, who had tried very hard to help him.
And it wasn’t—it was not—that Cord thought he was better than Handy (he obviously wasn’t better than Handy, who had been sober for decades), but he found himself dreading the potlucks at Handy’s house, the AA meetings, the coffee klatches, the imperative to respond all the time when Handy texted, hey buddy, checking in.
Cord stopped “checking in” around the first two weeks of lockdown. He instacarted a very good bottle of Sangiovese about two weeks after that.
What Cord wanted was a third avenue: not to drink too much, but not to have to put in all the unrelenting work of sobriety. He wanted to be like Charlotte: easy, breezy, beautiful.
Maybe he should make a “Sweethearts” app, but for AA sponsors. Could a chatbot keep him sober without all the muss and fuss of human connection?
As he traversed Tidewater Square to Brandenberry Road, Cord smelled pine needles.
On his left was a body of water he didn’t know the name of (or maybe it was a marsh?
Lagoon?) and a house some rich guy had built to withstand hurricanes (good luck with that).
The hurricane house was a normal house elevated by concrete piers.
We’re all trying to game disaster, thought Cord.
Finally, he reached his mom’s yard. It was a bit overgrown but Cord loved every inch: the live oaks draped in Spanish moss, the palmetto palms, and Charlotte’s pink azaleas.
But there was something new poking out from beside Cord’s mother’s front door…
and it was a flagpole. Cord put his hand on his chest. Had Charlotte become an old woman who hung seasonal flags?
It seemed that yes, she had. A flag featuring the deranged face of an Easter bunny (poor bunny, those teeth!) hung limply in the humid evening. Gauche!
Cord trudged along the brick driveway to the front door, which was locked. Luckily, he knew the garage code. (It was his birthday.) He maneuvered his way past the golf cart in the dark, grabbed a dusty bottle of champagne from his mom’s wine fridge, and let himself into the kitchen.
“Yoo-hoo!” called Cord.
There was no answer, and the house was completely dark.