Dawn
“They want you to hate me so that you can destroy me,” Morbus said, “but you don’t, do you?” And she didn’t. She saw in him one hundred years of loss and struggle, and what she felt in the innermost chamber of her heart was a wish to help him.
—Morbus Rising
I wasn’t the only one with a dog in the basement of the Quaker church.
One woman who must have been in her seventies carried a tiny poodle in a Louis Vuitton tote, and their heads of curly white hair were a hilarious match.
I tried not to snicker. An enormous gray-and-white sheepdog snoozed in the corner, and when Alfie pranced in, looking avidly around for someone who might pet him, the big fluffy dog opened one eye to see who’d arrived, then went back to his nap.
Now that’s Zen, I thought, wrapping Alfie’s leash more tightly around my hand so that he wouldn’t jump on strangers.
Everyone got a paper cup of coffee that I realized on first sip was barely recognizable as coffee, but I wasn’t going to sit in this room without the de rigueur cup in my hands.
Audrey and I selected two chairs that had been put into a circle in the center of the plain room with the white walls and short teal carpet.
Seeing that there was nothing else for him to do, Alfie collapsed with a dramatic exhale at my feet.
I wished he were sitting so I could pet his ears for comfort, because the way our chairs were arranged made me feel incredibly exposed.
There was nothing but open space between me and the woman across from me in the circle.
And even though I kept telling myself Audrey said you don’t have to talk, the idea of everyone else’s opening line being “Hi, I’m So-and-So, and I’m an alcoholic” made me sweat and my throat narrow.
It also appeared that Audrey and I were the youngest in this group by at least a decade; there were two women I guessed were probably in their fifties.
Everyone was dressed in linen and had the brown, lined skin of people who’d seen plenty of desert sun.
The woman with the poodle, who sat patiently in the tote at the side of her owner’s chair, got things underway, and her voice was deeper and more authoritative than her—and her dog’s—hair had suggested.
“Welcome, everyone. I’m so glad you could come to this meeting that was called by Audrey Wilder, who has brought her oldest and dearest friend.”
Wait, what? Audrey called a special meeting?
As if reading the fear on my face, the woman said directly to me, “What is spoken in this room is received in the strictest of confidences. And we ask that you, too, keep what is said here in your heart only, never to speak of it beyond these walls.”
“Of course,” I said solemnly.
“Thank you. Now, you may feel moved to participate, or you may not. It’s entirely up to you. Why don’t you start by just listening?”
I nodded.
“First, we begin with the recitation.”
Everyone bowed their heads. A few of them put their palms together under their chins, as if in prayer at church.
As one, they said, “Together, may we find the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change what we have the power to change, and the wisdom to see the difference.”
I’d heard these lines before. It was a prayer, but this group had taken religion out of it, looking to each other—May we find, not May God show me—for the guidance. Though the words still made me uncomfortable, I found a modicum of comfort in the meaning. Honestly, I could use some wisdom.
And courage.
And serenity, for that matter. Be in the moment.
“Audrey, I believe you brought a reading for us today?”
Audrey smiled and pulled Saving Vineland, the fifth of the six novels, out of her black bag. My heart sped up. Her copy was soft and worn. She really had read them—and clearly more than once.
“Thank you, Sharon,” Audrey said to the white-haired woman, and as she cleared her throat and opened the book to a point at the very end, the world receded for the second time that day, just like it had when I was with Mason.
The lights of the Assembly dimmed, and the Matriarch cast watery eyes on Phoebe. “What shall we do?” the old woman asked.
Phoebe looked at the Matriarch, who glistened with the beauty of her knowledge and her strength, and hesitated.
Who was Phoebe, only fifteen years old, to know what Vineland should do about Morbus, the warped shadow of a human and the sworn enemy of their people?
But the Matriarch believed in her, so she must believe in herself.
“We must love him,” Phoebe replied. “It is the only way.”
A sudden and great upheaval of dissent exploded all around them, but the Matriarch rose to her full height, and all sound in the hall died to silence.
“Teach us,” the Matriarch said to Phoebe, which filled her with the greatest pain and dread of her life, for she knew that to impart what she knew of love would be to steal the very innocence she so treasured about this place.
But it had to be done. Her lack of innocence was the reason she was the One.
Audrey closed the book. “I picked this reading,” she said, making eye contact with everyone in the room except me, “because I needed a reminder today that sometimes we need to trust in love. And not romantic love. That’s not what this book is about.
This book, and this passage, is about loving without innocence.
It’s about the hard kind of love. The love born of acceptance of what is, not what we want things to be.
And it’s about honoring what we know to be true, even when it’s hard. ”
I was stunned that most of the women around us nodded their heads and murmured their understanding.
Love born of acceptance.
What was I supposed to be accepting here?
My mother’s lie about her sister? Possible lies, plural?
My aspirations to do more with the rest of my life than make other people’s imagined worlds a tangible reality?
To tell a story of my own? A story I could own and be proud of, unlike the story I was living that brought me so much shame?
Sharon, the poodle-haired woman, interrupted my thoughts: “Thank you so much for that offering, Audrey. True love, self-love, begins with the acceptance of what is. Who would like to share first?”
True love is self-love?
I was swimming in very deep waters here, feeling them pull me under.
Like that time in Carmel with Mom when the wave hit us. I was so little, but she held on to my hand and made sure I didn’t wash out to sea. God, I hadn’t thought of that in years. She seemed so powerful to me then.
Thankfully, one of the women put her hand up and started talking in a warbly way that distracted me from my spiraling thoughts.
“As many of you know, my mother is eighty-five and dying of Alzheimer’s.
She’s been in a home for about a year, and—” The woman choked on a rising sob, pulled a wad of wrinkled tissue out of her pocket, and dabbed at her eyes.
“She’s at the point where she doesn’t even recognize us anymore.
I visit her, and she either thinks I’m her sister who she hates and hasn’t spoken to in twenty years, or she thinks I’m there to steal her jewelry.
I just…have so much regret for the time I spent drinking away my feelings.
And now that I’m sober and really able to be present for her, she’s gone.
And I want to drink to make this horrible feeling of loss and regret go away.
” At this, she broke down in unbridled tears.
The woman to her left scooted her chair closer so that she could put an arm around her, and everyone sat in silence.
I wanted to leave the room, but I was welded to my seat, watching this messy display of emotion unspool.
Why was I—let alone this whole room of people—privy to this woman’s pain?
But also, horrifically, I recognized myself in this woman’s story; I, too, felt enormous regret about the nights I’d spent drunk while Clark was sober, and the mornings I’d bailed on hikes we’d planned because I was hungover.
The visits to Mom I’d skipped because I knew I wouldn’t be able to drink like I wanted to around her.
My cheeks burned at these acknowledgments.
Jesus. Why isn’t anyone doing anything for this crying woman?
I fought an impulse to get her more tissues. A cookie. Another cup of terrible coffee. Audrey looked at the woman with emotional eyes of her own. Doing nothing was clearly the thing to do.
Strange.
After a few minutes, the woman inhaled a deep, steady breath and said, “Thank you for holding space for me.”
Holding space. I’d heard that term before, on a few self-help podcasts and blogs, but I’d never understood what it meant until now: It was as if this woman with the dying mother had put her pain into the circle of sitting women, and all of us were holding it now with her, helping to shoulder her burden.
Sharon spoke gently. “Thank you for sharing that, Wendy. Regret is one of the hardest things about sobriety. Facing the things we lost and the things we pushed away. But you’re here now. You’re not drinking now. And that is the greatest gift you can give yourself and your family.”
Wendy nodded and even cracked a red-faced smile. “My son is home from college, and he told me he’s proud of me.”
“And we get our affirmations from the least likely places.”
Everyone laughed softly in recognition, and it was like the sound of a broom sweeping the room clean.