By the time noon rolls around, I’m sitting at the desk with nothing else to do. Father Rolly went out to make a house call and will be back, so I turn the computer on and search for the pawn shops in the area.
I call ten of the ones that I know Andrew has been to, but none of them have anything like what I’m describing. I hang up the phone, and it rings right away, and when I answer it, I’m smiling until I hear his voice.
I want to be mad that he was with someone, but I can’t be. I give him one-word answers, and he knows within two minutes into the conversation—hell, within one minute into the conversation—that I’m not myself.
“It was a wrong number,” he says, and the pen in my hand that I was tapping on the notepad stops. “This morning, the text I got. It was a wrong number.”
“Justin, there is no need to explain anything to me.” I pretend that I’m fine, and that everything is fine. “You’re free to do what you want with who you want.” I close my eyes, trying not to picture him with someone else.
“Caroline,” he says, and my heart pulls to him. To tell him that I was jealous and angry. That I don’t know what is going on, but I want to tell him everything, except I don’t.
“I really have to go.” I put the phone down and take a deep inhale and exhale.
“We are sometimes our own worst enemies.” I look up at the woman who runs the Narcotics Anonymous meeting. “Sorry for eavesdropping. I’m Cheryl,” she says. Her brown eyes look almost black, and her curly long brown hair is everywhere. “You must be Caroline. Father Rolly was telling me all about you last night.” Her smile fills her face, and I watch as she sits down in the same chair I sat in just yesterday.
“I thought you were only coming in at one?” I ask. She smiles and crosses her leg, and I have to say she looks so graceful.
“I got finished early and figured I would come around and introduce myself.” She puts her hands in her lap. “I should have thought this through and got coffee.”
I laugh now. “No need.” I put my pen down. “What you said before …?”
“About us being our worst enemies?” she says, and I nod. “It’s things that we do when we’ve been around addicts.”
“How do you move past it?” I look at her.
“My father was an addict, my mother an addict, and then my sister and brother both followed in their footsteps.” She starts to share her story. “I was the one pretending everything was okay. The one covering for them.” She shakes her head. “From the school, from their co-workers, from their bosses. Until I left them to fend for themselves.”
“How did you do it?” I ask, and she looks at me, waiting for me to expand on the question. “When did you finally say fuck this and let them sink?”
“When I came home, and the lights were cut off,” she says. “I had hidden the money for the electric bill in the bathroom in a plastic soap container that I put in a junk drawer that no one ever went in. I was wrong. When you are chasing your next fix, you search everywhere.”
“My son’s father stole his hockey equipment last night,” I say. “I knew that he was low. I mean, he’s stolen just about everything that I have of value.”
“But you allow him to come into the home,” she points out.
“I don’t want my son to miss any time that he can have with him,” I say.
“You mean you don’t want to be the bitch who keeps a child from his parent?” She uses the same words that Andrew threw at me last year after he sold our third television set. “Oh, I’ve been called more than that by my own father.”
“How do you do it?” I ask, waiting for the answer.
“I put myself ahead of them. Me.” She smiles at me. “I was a teen mom at fifteen because I was looking for any type of love I could get, and just like that, I fell for an addict who destroyed himself at the end and took a piece of me when he left our child in the stroller while he went to get high in December.” My hand goes to my mouth. “I’ve made peace with it. God has a plan for us, and I didn’t know it then. I will never fully understand it, but …” She wipes a tear away from her cheek.
“How?” I ask. “How do you do it?”
“I stopped being my own worst enemy and saw that no matter what I did or how I did it, I can’t be blamed for other people’s actions.” The sound of the door slamming makes us both look toward the door, and we see a man coming in and sitting in one of the chairs. “I guess that’s my cue.” She gets up. “This was nice.”
“It was,” I say as she turns to walk out of the room.
“You know, the meetings are not just for the addicts but also for the ones living through this. If you ever feel like sitting with us.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I have a couple of things to finish before Father Rolly comes back.”
“Well, the meeting is always open,” she says with a smile, and then she turns to walk into the room, and I’m left with my head spinning. I get up and decide to update the filing system, and then when that is over, I see about maybe making all items digital. When Father Rolly walks in two hours later, I look up from the computer.
“Hey there, Father.” I smile at him. “How was this morning?”
“As expected. Mrs. Rodriguez is not going to recover from losing her husband, but we can sit and talk for as long as she wants.”
“It must be hard,” I say, and he looks at the files in front of me. “I’m going to try a system,” I say, and he just smiles.
“You young kids and your systems,” he jokes.
“Just think of all the extra space we’ll have if I get all these papers into this computer,” I joke, and he smiles at me.
“You have a great night,” he says and turns to walk up the stairs and, then I get bombarded with phone calls about baptisms and communions. When I finally hang up, the phone rings again, and I pick it right up.
“Hey, Mom,” Dylan says, and I’m already halfway out of my chair.
“Dylan, are you okay?” I ask, frantic, and if this was a cordless phone, I would be outside already.
“He’s fine.” I hear Justin’s voice, and I sit back down in my chair. “We are just letting you know that we are on our way, and we’ll pick you up at work.”
“But it’s early?” I say, and then look at the clock on the wall and the computer to make sure they are both right.
“Yeah, the rink had a power outage, so we left early, and we got some ice cream. We’re going to come and get you.”
“But—” I start, and then Dylan cuts me off.
“Mom, I did a three-pointer again.” I close my eyes.
“That’s great,” I say, and then the other line rings. “Okay, I have someone on the other line. I’ll call you right back.”
“No need,” Justin says. “We’ll be there in twenty minutes. Come out when you finish,” he says and then disconnects.
I press the button to switch to the other line. “Hey, this is Travis,” he says. “You called earlier about hockey equipment for a kid.”