Chapter 23 Ruby
Ruby
I sat in the passenger seat and burst into tears. I hugged Mom tightly. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry for everything, Mom.’ Her stiffened body loosened in my arms.
‘I’m sorry too, darling. I should never have …’ She was afraid to speak the words. We drove away.
I did not tell her I was pregnant. She had said that as long as I stayed sober, Dad would support me financially.
After a few fraught weeks at Mom’s, wearing increasingly baggy sweatshirts and disguising my nausea, it was agreed that I could move into Grandma’s house by myself.
Mom gave me the new keys. I deferred college for a year.
They were understanding when I told them I’d been in treatment for addiction.
Even Professor White said, ‘I’m glad you got the help you needed.
We’ll see you next September.’ After missing a year of school and then a year of college, I was going to be the oldest graduate of all my classmates, but that was the least of my concerns.
I had not arranged to travel to London for the abortion.
I wasn’t ready to face up to it yet, but I could feel the baby kicking from time to time.
I don’t know why I wasn’t more proactive about it.
A trip to London for the procedure would take less than twenty-four hours. But I was too busy staying sober.
We’d had AA meetings in Longhurst, so I was used to the format, but I was still nervous going to my first one outside.
I had a list of meetings I could go to in Dublin.
There was one in a community centre nearby on a Tuesday at 9 a.m. I sat in my car until the last minute and then crept in and took a seat at the back.
The chairs were arranged in a haphazard circle.
There was tea and biscuits on a table at the other end of the room.
People were still milling about, until a woman rang a bell and asked everyone to take a seat.
I kept my head down and tried not to be seen, pulled a baseball cap low down on my head.
I had heard a lot of dramatic stories in rehab, but in this meeting, they talked about their recovery.
There was an old man who had been sober for forty-two years who admitted that, even though he never felt a compulsion to drink again, he wasn’t going to take the risk and that’s why he came to meetings twice a week, to keep him on the straight and narrow.
I couldn’t think beyond the end of the meeting, let alone forty years ahead.
Others told of relationship difficulties: some were living with spouses in active addiction; others were finding it hard to rebuild trust in their relationships.
One woman had relapsed after twenty-three years of sobriety.
She couldn’t think of a single reason why.
She had woken up on Tuesday of last week and opened the bottle of champagne that had been bought for her sister’s bachelorette party.
A young guy told her it didn’t matter what the reason was.
She had come back to the meeting, and she would receive all the support she needed.
Towards the end, the woman with the bell asked me directly if I was new.
I introduced myself in the traditional way.
Saying it in a room full of strangers, and meaning it, was liberating.
It was like stepping out from a shadow. I clarified that I wasn’t a tourist and lived nearby.
I admitted to cocaine addiction too. I admitted this was my first meeting since rehab.
Everyone applauded, but I was uncomfortable with that.
‘Maybe you can clap when I’ve been here a year,’ I said quietly.
‘No, this is the meeting that is worthy of applause,’ the woman said.
‘You have shown courage today. We don’t know you, but I can assure you that everyone in this room wants sobriety for you as much as they want it for themselves.
It’s not impossible to stay sober on your own, but it’s much easier to get there with us. ’
We ended with the serenity prayer, and then everyone said, ‘Keep coming back.’ Some of it was a bit corny to me, but it all meant something.
I did feel better after the meeting. It was full of all kinds of people.
A boy, who looked like a teenager, came over and said, ‘Don’t think about a year, think about today.
Try to stay sober today.’ It wasn’t like Longhurst, where everyone was wealthy, but as I’d listened, the stories were similar.
Losing jobs, partners, being estranged from parents and children, destroying property.
I was lucky, I still had Mom and Grandma.
Judging by their clothes and accents and the level of grooming, addicts came in all shapes and sizes.
Another woman came over and told me about a Narcotics Anonymous meeting that she went to.
She said she’d be there on Sunday if I wanted to go.
As I got up to leave, a man stopped me on the way out. ‘Jack.’ I recognized him from my first visit to Longhurst. His demeanour was no different here. The hostility he had carried in his body was still there.
‘Are you for real this time?’ he said, still suspicious of me.
‘I’m here, I’m trying.’
‘Good for you,’ he said. I’m not sure he believed me.