Last Night I Sang to the Monster (9 page)

Adam nodded. “Okay,” he said. He added anger next to Maggie’s name.

Then Sharkey said, “You forgot to write something next to Adam.”

Adam grinned at him. “Don’t worry about Adam. Worry about Sharkey.”

That sort of made Sharkey quiet down. But, God, it was a sad list, I’ll tell you that. And it wasn’t like Adam was really making all this stuff up. I wanted to walk up to that list and erase it.

I looked at Rafael who just kept shaking his head.

I don’t want to know these things.
I don’t. I know that Adam—look—he’s okay. He reminds me of Mr. Garcia. But he’s tearing me up.

I hate this.

The list makes me really sad.

I’m thinking about bourbon.

I’m thinking about how bourbon was my higher power. I’m feeling very anxious.

At the end of the day, I was still on contract concerning the F-
word.
Sharkey went on contract concerning that word too. In fact we all went on contract. While he was at the board, Adam got this brilliant idea. Yeah, brilliant. We all had to list our favorite expressions and he put us all on contract. We couldn’t use those expressions in group for a week.

“Look,” he said, “it’s not a bad idea for us to take a good look at the way we talk, at the way we express ourselves. Let’s call it
change
with a small ‘c.’ It’s only for a week. Let’s try it.”

So I was okay not using the F-
word
in group. It wasn’t going to kill me. I could think it. I didn’t have to say it. I could use another word. And
it wasn’t as if I said that much in group. But I did like to say things like
That really stuns me out
and
that tears me up
or
I’m really wigging out right now.
So I was on contract about using those expressions for a week. Big deal. I’d use them in my head.

No one can put you on contract for the things you keep in your head.

But I’m telling you, Sharkey was one pissed-off dude. After group I heard him tell Adam that he wanted to change therapists. Adam wasn’t all that shaken up about it from what I could tell. He kinda smiled at Sharkey and said, “Sorry, buddy, but we’re kind of stuck with each other for now.”

“I’m serious,” Sharkey said.

“Okay,” Adam said, “we’ll talk about it.”

Sharkey, he was just letting off steam. He gets himself all worked up. See, I get Sharkey. He gets all worked up and gets all verbal. I’m like that but different. I get all worked up and get all anxious. Maybe I get verbal too. Only I get verbal in my head. You know, that internal life Adam talks about.

The next day, Adam came back to the whole idea of words and how we use them. He says it wasn’t a bad idea for all of us to engage our imaginations and come up with new words that expressed our internal lives—“our rich internal lives.” I wonder where he lifted that from. Mentally, I was going to put Adam on contract for that expression.

That Adam, he was certainly an optimist. Look, I’d seen what having internal lives did to my mom and dad. Like I wanted that. He gave us all homework. We had to come up with a list of words that expressed what we felt. No cuss words were allowed on the list. He really pissed me off sometimes. I mean it. Sorry, I can’t say he pissed me off. I have to say, he really makes me angry. That’s a really boring way to say what I feel.
I am not fucking boring.
Okay, okay, sorry, sorry. No more of that F-
word
stuff. I’m on contract.

And there’s another thing I’m on contract for. It has to do with that 85% thing. See, I have to bring that number down. Adam says I isolate. He is addicted to telling me that I spend too much time in my head. It’s an unhealthy behavior. Look, I don’t see how not bothering other people with your screwed-up vision of the world constitutes unhealthy behavior. Okay, so I hang out in my cabin a lot. What’s wrong with lying on your bed and
thinking? Like that’s a crime. Look, I can do that for hours. See, this is the way I see it: I got this gerbil in my head. And he’s always running around up there, stirring things up. I named him Al. So Al, he and I, well, we have this thing going. He stirs things up and I hang out with all the things he stirs up.

Adam thinks I need to shut Al down. Letting Al run wild in my head is not good for me. And he wants me to talk more in group. He calls it sharing. “Can you share more in group?” Look, if I wanted to share more, I would. That’s the deal. You know, it isn’t as if Adam pushes me. Well, he does push me but in a very subtle kind of way. Well, maybe not all that subtle. He’s always trying to figure out some kind of game plan. That’s how I see him. He’s cool. He is. Mostly I like him. But not all the time.

Sometimes, when I’m in Adam’s office, I study that picture he has of his kids. I guess I wonder what it would be like to have Adam as a father. I don’t think that I should think those things. Thinking about what kind of father Adam would be is an unhealthy behavior. That’s the way I see it. Adam. He even showed up in a dream I had. He was trying to talk to me but I couldn’t hear him. I kept trying to get him to talk louder. I could see his lips moving and his hands moving and he was trying to explain something to me. And then I realized that there wasn’t anything wrong with Adam. It was me. I’d gone deaf. I hated that dream.

And what was Adam doing in my dreams? I mean, wasn’t it bad enough that he was always trying to get inside my head? And who wants to see what’s inside of my head anyway? There’s all these words blowing around my head right now:
Zach winter remembering dreams summer forgetting blood Adam change change change.

In winter we yearn for summer.
That’s what Rafael whispered last night as he watched the snow fall. He went with me to the smoking pit. He was talking more to himself than to me. He held his hand out and tried to catch the snow.

I knew he was remembering. He looked sad and alone and I knew he was far away.

“What were you like when you were my age?”

“Like you,” he said.

“Like me?”

“I think so. Yes.”

I offered him a cigarette.

He shook his head. “I quit ten years ago—and I’m not going back.”

“Was it hard to quit?”

“I’m an addict. Everything is hard to quit.” He laughed. He looked out at the falling snow. “When I was your age, I used to loiter around the liquor store and talk someone into buying me a pint of bourbon. I’d walk around and smoke and drink. I really liked doing that—especially in the winter when it was cold.”

“Why did you drink?”

“Same reason as you. I was in pain. I just didn’t know it.”

I wanted to ask him why he was in pain—but I didn’t.

“Life hasn’t been easy on you, has it, Zach?”

“It’s been okay.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Yeah, guess so. Not that life’s been all that easy on you either.”

“That’s no excuse for becoming a drunk.”

The way he said it—like he was done with drinking. But he was also really angry with himself. “Maybe it is,” I said.

“No, Zach, it isn’t.”

“Does it have to be this hard?”

“You’re a sweet kid, you know that?”

I wanted to cry.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “I know you don’t like compliments.”

That made me laugh. I don’t know why, but Rafael was laughing too. Maybe just to keep me company. “Does it hurt—to remember?”

“Hurts like hell, Zach.”

“Will it ever stop?”

“I have to believe that it
will
stop.”

I wished to hell I could have believed him.

I wasn’t hungry. I went to breakfast anyway. I was late so the place was pretty empty. There was a guy sitting by himself at one of the tables. I decided to sit with him. I mean, it would’ve been uncool not to sit with him. I went into my head and tried to retrieve his name: Eddie. I was good at remembering names. The guy was about Rafael’s age and he’d only been here a couple of days.

I put my plate across from him and sort of smiled. “Hi, Eddie.”

“Hi,” he said. “Forgot your name.” He sort of frowned.

“Zach.”

“Yeah,” he said. He did not seem interested. I should have left the guy alone. Shit. Too late.

“So what group are you in?” It was the best I could do to start a conversation.

“I’m in the
I’m-Leaving
group.”

“You just got here.”

“This place isn’t my brand of gin.”

I guess I just didn’t know what to say. I decided right then and there that I was going to make a list of people who came and stayed here less than a week. I mean, I guess I just didn’t get that. It sort of made me mad. But maybe it made me mad because they were doing what I wanted to do. Maybe they were doing the brave thing. They were going back home. I mean, what was keeping me here? I know I’m still a high school student, but I’m eighteen—and that makes me an adult. What was keeping me here? Why not
just go home? Maybe I was just hiding out here.

The guy looked at me for a while. “What the fuck are you doing in here anyway?”

I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything.

“Do you believe in Jesus, kid?”

I thought that was a really weird question. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“What’s he ever done for you? What’s he ever done for any of us?”

“I haven’t thought about it that much,” I said.

“I got some advice for you. This place will just take your money and throw you back out there again. It’s a fucking waste.”

“So you’re just gonna go back out there and drink?” I didn’t know I was going to say that. Sometimes, I really wig myself out.

“What the fuck’s it to you?”

I looked down at my plate. I thought maybe he was going to hit me and I started trembling on the inside—just like I did when my brother was about to hit me. The anxiety was owning me again. God, I hated this feeling, hated it, and I just couldn’t move, couldn’t talk. I don’t know how I did it, but somehow I made my legs move. I made my arms move. I made it to the bathroom just in time to throw up. I hugged the toilet bowl until all the words in my head stopped spinning. I got up and washed my face and breathed until I felt myself getting quiet again. I made my way to the smoking pit and lit a cigarette. Sharkey was watching me. “You okay? You look a little pale, dude.”

“Something I ate,” I said.

“Sure,” he said. I hated the way he said
sure.
Sometimes I just wanted to beat the crap out of Sharkey. Why couldn’t he just leave a guy alone with his anxiety?

By the time I got to group, I felt better. Better does not equal good.

I kept thinking about Eddie’s question, about what Jesus had ever
done for me. I took a deep breath and tried to exhale the question. Not that I really thought things worked that way. You can’t just breathe out anxiety. You can’t just breathe out confusion.

There was a therapy they used around here. It was called Breathwork. Sharkey and Rafael, they did that stuff. Breathwork. Look, you just can’t breathe in and out and expect everything to be fine. Sometimes, instead of taking a deep breath, I counted. So I looked around the room and that’s what I did. Counted. For some reason, counting calmed me down. Seven people in group now that Mark was gone. Thirty days at this place and now gone back to his family. He left a sober man. Yeah, sober. But, I don’t know, I was sort of worried about him. Mark, he still looked a little angry, you know. And it was like he still had too much of the street in him. Like Sharkey. Maybe I thought he could never be tamed and that a house with a wife and kids could never make him happy because there was something too wild inside of him. There was too much fire in his eyes. You know, like he could light into you or anyone he ran into for any reason. That wild thing inside him.

Yeah, what do I know?

Look, I think too much. That’s the way I am. Worry, worry, worry. Worry and anxiety go together. It’s better now with the meds. But I don’t like taking them. They’re non-addictive. That’s cool. But, you know, it bugs the crap out of me that I have to take something to keep me calmer.

When Mark left, we did our usual goodbye thing in group. Adam has these medals. They look like they’re made of copper—or at least that’s what it seems like they’re made of. On one side the medal says:
To thine own self be true.
And on the other side, there’s an angel who looks like he’s praying. I’m not into angels. Not that I know anything about angels.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about that medal we pass around when someone leaves the group. I’m not sure about this
To-thine-own-self-be-true
stuff. Speaking for myself, I’m not sure what that means. Am I being true to myself if I want to forget? Am I being true to myself if I want to remember? The part of me that wants to live in forgetting is pretty real. So am I supposed to be true to that
thine self?
That medal wigs me out.

So we do the ritual of passing the medal around. We hold it and we
press something good into it. You know, like a good wish. Rafael pressed a lifetime of sobriety into it. That was cool. I mean, it wasn’t like a lifetime of sobriety was going to be easy—not in a world that pushed alcohol as a full-time hobby. But still, maybe when Mark wanted to take a drink he’d remember what Rafael had pressed into his coin. And, well, maybe he wouldn’t drink. I got the feeling Mark drank like my dad. Not good. Not a healthy behavior.