Nancy pt. 3
Nancy never came to a meeting again. I wanted to be the one not go, but I had to because six full months earlier I’d run my car off the side of the road high on ambien. When the police drove up their flashing lights looked like patriotic lightning bugs, floating around my head in small, furry glow balls. I got out of my car and waved my arms as if they wouldn’t see me. As if they weren’t coming for me.
I got a sponsor after awhile, a woman in her 40′s with skin that sagged around her eyes like flaky breakfast rolls. She wore florescent colored t-shirts she’d gathered from different bachelorette parties with slogans written on the back in black graffiti type: “Maggie’s Final Hurrah” or “Sarah Finally #SealstheDeal!”. She constantly encouraged me to go to Vegas saying that I would love it, absolutely love it. I told her my ex-boyfriend lived there playing poker for the mob and also I had epilepsy. She never remembered and maybe it was because she could tell they were lies or maybe she was a lousy sponsor.
I called her only once.
It had been month’s since Nancy and I’d spoken. I was angrier than I had ever been in my life. I took adderall every morning and went for long, fast runs through the streets before the sun broke the sky into light. I would think of strange men in long coats and how if they kidnapped me I would beat their faces in with my fists. I’d go even after I heard their bones break. I’d kick their crotches till their balls exploded. I’d pepper spray their faces until their eyes fell out. I wanted to feel that. I wanted to know I could fight someone bad and that I could win because I was good.
And one morning I wanted to fight Nancy. or fuck him. Or save him. I ran for 100 blocks until i reached his apartment, my ribs exploding and searing. I could feel myself turning crazy as my feet slapped sidewalk after sidewalk, my hair frizzying and my face growing redder with each block. When I finally got to his shared apartment, I stood outside looking into his windows holding myself sideways and wondering if I should scream or throw stones or shimmy up the drain pipe and break his window open.
I called her and she answered completely awake.
“What’s wrong, Lisa?”
My body was thick and so heavy that I thought if I stood still enough I’d fall through the cement and through the dirt and slide through all the magnum and sludge and come out fresh and new in China. In that moment I wanted everything that had ever happened to me to be different. I wanted to erase my part of the world.
And I sat down on the side of the road and I told some woman that and I told her about my drinking and the pills and how sad I was and how I felt like things made sense for everyone else but they never would for me. I told her about the book I had read that Nancy had read too and how he used to text me lines from it every night and I thought that would save my life. I told her that I didn’t know how to get home from here. I didn’t think my legs would make it.
She came an hour later in a rusted mini van that smelled like old paper and drove me back to my house. When we pulled up I could see that the kitchen lights were on.
“Lisa, what would you like to happen from you doing all this?”
I stared at my kitchen window thinking of all the excuses I would need for where I’ve been, why I can’t walk, why I will inevitably call off from work and lay around all day smoking cigarettes and watching Teen Mom reruns.
“I just want him to call me and I want to play him songs on my iPhone,” I told her, hot tears pouring from my eyes. “I just want to make him cookies and ask him questions. I don’t know, I say I want only that but I always want more. I don’t know.”
We sit for a long time in silence. I stop crying and wait for her to tell me how brave and strong I am and how my dedication to AA will help me figure everything out. But she doesn’t.
“Call him,” she says. “Call him and tell him you miss him.”
