I want a program, Walter says, slurring.
You just left one.
I want another one.
I write today’s date in his file. Previous intakes all say the same thing: Johns says he has been drinking about twenty years. His last drink, he says, was minutes before this intake. Wants a program. No one grows up wishing to be an alcoholic, Stacey would tell me, but no one makes them drink either. They can quit if they choose. Don’t take on someone else’s sobriety. Concentrate on your own.
Stacey’s husband died of a heart attack while he was jogging. He wasn’t a drinker, never had a problem with booze. Forty something. Could have happened to anybody. Just like that. Accept the things you cannot change, but Stacey couldn’t. She had been ten years clean and sober when she started drinking again a week after he died. She lives with her daughter, Nancy, now. Nancy told me to stop calling. My mom is no longer available to you, she said.
After I finish Walter’s intake, I take him to detox, a large room on the other side of a divider that separates it from the waiting area. Twenty exercise mats with blankets, sheets cover the tile floor. Four small tables form a horseshoe around a kitchenette. Chicken noodle soup is warming on a hot plate beside a plate of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. A door behind the kitchenette leads into a woman’s dorm.
Mat number ten, Walter, I say. You want something to eat?
He shakes his head, dive bombs onto his mat, and passes out.
I punch out and walk home. I rent a room at The Bridge, a two-year transitional housing hotel for recovering alcoholics and addicts on Ellis, north of Market Street in the Tenderloin. I’ve got another twelve months before I’ll have to move out. I try not to think about that although I should, I know. Have a plan. I take an elevator to my third-floor room and throw my purse on my bed and open my window. Fog rolls in off San Francisco Bay. I have a K-cup coffee machine and knee-high refrigerator that just fits beneath my sink. I make a ham sandwich on my bed and brush the crumbs to the floor. When I’m done eating, I brush my teeth, change into pj’s, shut off the lights, and stretch out. The neon vacancy sign of a hotel across the street blinks on and off, striping my blanket with blue and red lights.
Down the hall, this chick and her boyfriend, both of them recovering crackheads, are going at it screaming at each other. The building manager, Larry, will be humping it to our floor in a minute to see what all’s going on. He’s been sober five years, lives on the first floor, and assumes we’re all chipping. He frisks visitors to see if they’re carrying booze. Residents complain, but Larry turns it around on them. If your friend’s clean what’s the problem with a pat down? He’ll check on these two idiots and then he’ll knock on all our doors to see what the rest of us are up to.
Kicking out of bed, I turn on my night table lamp and get a smoke. Might as well wait for Larry. My shadow spreads like a stain against the wall as I stand and make coffee. I like it strong to get a little speed rush. Won’t last but it feels good, and there’s not a goddamn thing Larry can do about it. Stinkin’ thinkin’, Stacey would say, but she’s in no place to judge.
I hear the elevator doors open followed by the heavy steps of Larry’s gunslinger strut and then I hear him knocking on the couple’s door. They shut up in an instant like something switched off. I sit on my bed and slouch against the wall, listening to the coffee drip. After a moment, I hear Larry knock on another door as he begins working his way down the hall. The crackheads must’ve been clean, because he didn’t spend any kind of time with them. When he knocks on my door I don’t answer. I feel guilty about my anticipated coffee buzz. I’ve done nothing, the coffee isn’t even ready yet. Still, I’m afraid to answer.
The next afternoon I punch in at work and look at a clipboard to see how many people we have in detox. Just five intakes. Walter’s still here. Rosemary tells me a social worker is trying to get him into a long-term detox but he’s been through so many programs no one wants him. Even Sally’s won’t take him back. He’s slouched at a table with a bowl of soup. Circles beneath his eyes like the mouths of caves. He holds a spoon poised over the bowl. His hand shakes and the soup slops onto the table. A woman sitting across from him rests her chin in her hands and stares at a wall. I don’t see her name on the clipboard. Rosemary tells me she’s not here for detox. She just completed an alcohol program at San Francisco General Hospital and is waiting for a halfway house. None of the women’s shelters have any spare beds and she has no place to stay. General sent her to us. She spent the morning in the waiting area. Rosemary sent her over to detox to get something to eat.
What’s her name?
I didn’t ask, Rosemary says.
Why?
She’s not in detox.
I sit at a desk and begin reading a National Geographic someone left. Every half hour I get up and check on anyone asleep in detox to make sure they’re still breathing. The woman drums her fingers against the table. A stuffed plastic bag filled with clothes sags against her feet.
There’s coffee by the soup, I tell her.
I’m OK, she goes. Thanks.
She gives a weak smile. I smile back.
You can use the showers in the women’s dorm if you want.
OK.
I go back to my desk and pick up the National Geographic again. The woman nods off, her chin bouncing against her chest. Her head lolls to one side and eyes snap open. I can see the momentary confusion in her face. Folding her arms, she rests a cheek against her hands and closes her eyes.
Why don’t we give her a bed? I ask Rosemary.
Because she’s not in detox.
She’s sitting in detox.
But she’s not in detox.
Rosemary has been clean and sober for twenty-odd years and is big on rules. She believes if you bend them at work you’ll bend them in your life, and that will lead to drinking.
Let’s give her a blanket at least, I say.
Rosemary scowls but doesn’t object. I go to the laundry room, take a blanket, and fold it around the woman. She wakes up and I tell her it’s OK, just a blanket. She pulls it around her. I pat her back and return to my desk.
Tonight, I have another drinking dream. I’m in the Mission with a bottle of Thunderbird at the Sixteenth Street Muni station. Two police officers haul me to my feet and throw me in the back of a paddy wagon. We’re dropping you off at Fresh Start, one of them says. I beg them not to. I work there, I say, I’ll lose my job. One of the officers turns to me. It’s Stacey. You didn’t follow your program, she says. You used your husband as an excuse to drink, I tell her. I was sober for ten years. You barely lasted twelve months. And she shoves me out of the van at Fresh Start just as I wake up.
In the afternoon, I bring my copy of the Big Book with me to work. I clock in and check the clipboard. Eight clients. Walter has been kept over again. He sits across from the woman. They’re both smoking. I presume the overnight shift let her stay. I walk through detox, do my head count, and then stop at their table. Her hair hangs limply around her face and she’s wearing the same clothes as she did yesterday.
You stayed last night? I ask her.
And all day today, she says.
She made the coffee this morning, Walter says.
He looks better. His hands don’t shake.
I wanted to keep busy, she says.
You should clean up, I tell her. Change your clothes. You’ll feel better.
I’m all right.
