We get in the car, and she starts it up. The Seu Jorge rendition of “Starman” floats out of the speakers—Bowie in Portuguese. I think my dead father is stalking me.
We are still not on speaking terms, I say to him.
Jo’s car smells like cigarettes, but she doesn’t light up.
“So, Hannah, your life totally sucks right now. I’ve got news for you: Your life is always going to suck a little.” She backs out of the parking spot and whips out of the garage. “So if anyone feeds you some bullshit story about sobriety in which the sun is always shining, don’t listen to them, because they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“My parents died in that tsunami,” I say. “And I had an abortion. And my boyfriend cheated on me. And I had to move here from LA, and I fucking hate Boston, no offense. And I don’t think I’m going to graduate. And I just broke up with a boy I think I really love. Oh, and I tried to kill myself. This all happened in the past nine months. I’ve accepted my life is always going to suck.”
“A little,” she says. “It doesn’t have to suck a lot. When it’s a lot, that’s when we’ve got trouble.” She stops at a red, glances at me. “But: Damn, girl.”
My mouth twitches. “It’s been a bad year.”
When we get to Zaftigs, we slide into one of the leather booths, next to a zany painting of a corpulent woman. I love the art here. It’s colorful and weird, like getting to walk around in the brain of a Venice boardwalk artist as they dream. Since it’s the holidays, there are Hanukkah decorations and generic American holiday fare: pretty ornaments dangling from the ceiling, bits of holly.
I run my hand over a snazzy dreidel propped up against the salt-shaker. “They tried to bring holiday cheer to rehab, but it was sad. Like, mini Christmas trees next to the Suboxone dispensary doesn’t help.”
Jo snorts. “Aw, man. At least you got out before the big day.” Four more days until Christmas. “I once spent New Year’s in rehab. Fucking sucked. They gave us Martinelli’s, and one of the alcoholics cried.”
“Lame.”
“How’d it feel, being in there? Being sober?”
I spin the dreidel, thinking. “I knew my mom wanted me there. That she wants me to see things from a different perspective. I tried to do that for her.”
“And what did you see?”
“That I almost erased one of the last traces of her on Earth.”
“So you want to get sober for her?”
I can see where this is going.
“I know I have to get sober for me. But she’s my talisman, you know?” I run a finger over her evil eye, which might have saved my life. I mean, Mae and Drew and Nate saved my life, but still. I like to think Mom had a part in it.
“Okay. We can work with that.”
Once we’ve got coffee and bagel chips and bowls of matzo ball soup, Jo takes a couple bites, then leans forward. “Ask me anything.”
“What is this, exactly? Me and you.”
Jo was matched with me through NA, some Narcotics Anonymous version of Tinder, where they put the newly sober with the not-so-newly sober in the hopes that the newly sober don’t fuck up again. The hospital figured it all out for me, gave me some options. I liked Jo’s hair and the fact she said fuck in the email she wrote me, so I chose her.
“Well, as your sponsor, I’m basically just here for you, man. Any time you think you might use, you call me,” she says. “Or text, whatever. Modern world! Any time you need someone to talk to, or have questions, or need help working the Steps—I’m your girl.”
The Steps. Right.
Whenever I detox, they’re all about the whole Twelve-Step Program thing. Work the Steps, they say.
Step one, I’ve got: I admitted I was powerless against the pills—it’s why I did what I did at the angel statue. Obviously that’s not how you’re supposed to work the Steps.
“What step would you say you’re on?” she asks me. She slurps her soup, then gives a satisfied smack of her lips.
“Two,” I say.
“‘We believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity,’” Jo says, quoting the pamphlet. “You agree with that?”
My mouth is full of soup, so it gives me an excuse to think. The soup’s good. Mom never tried making matzo ball.
“I believe in a power greater than myself,” I say. “Whatever She is.”
If Dad had a grave, he’d be rolling in it. I don’t know what that power is, but it’s real. It’s whatever allowed Pappoús to visit Yia-yia after he was already dead, their song—an old Greek love ballad—playing from an unplugged radio while they danced. I was there when it happened one night. I heard the music, even if I couldn’t see him. Heard my grandmother laugh like a teenage girl when he said something funny.
“But the whole thing about the power restoring your sanity?” I dip a bagel chip in my soup. “I don’t know about that.”
“This is how you win step two: You eliminate anything and anyone in your life that fucks with your serenity. You feel me?”
I frown. “Yeah, I tried that. I fuck with my serenity. But eliminating myself is, I guess, not an option.”
“Not an option,” she agrees. “You have any friends who used who’ve died?”
I shake my head.
“You live in this world long enough, you will. I’ve lost a lot of friends. Sometimes they die on purpose, sometimes not. Either way, we use because we’re not dealing with our shit. And at the bottom of our pile of shit, the foundation of our pile of shit, is the shit lie we tell ourselves: that we are shit. Sound familiar?”
I nod.
“You and me, we’re gonna figure out how to make you not feel like a pile of shit. Because I bet that’s when you throw back those pills. It’s certainly why I did.” She pulls up the sleeves of her shirt. She’s covered in old-school-looking sailor tats—anchors and ships and mermaids—but if you look closely …
“Track marks,” Jo says. “That’s what the pills will lead to. They almost always do. Heroin’s cheaper, easier to get, and the high hits you quicker. Same drug as your pills.”
I never thought about myself that way—as the kind of girl who would stick a needle in her arm. But if someone had come into my room during detox with a syringe, I wouldn’t have said no. They made me detox again, after the angel, and it was just as bad as the other two times. Third time is not a fucking charm.
I’m so tired.
“I don’t think…” I swallow. “I don’t think I can do this.”
Jo pulls down her sleeves. “How many days sober are you?”
“Ten.”
She holds up her hand. Black nail polish. Chipped. (I like her.)
“Count your fingers, Blue.”
“What?”
“You like Janis Joplin?”
I shrug.
Jo pulls out her phone. Scrolls through it. Then she hands me her earbuds.
“Put these on. Close your eyes.”
“Here?”
The look she gives me reminds me of Mom’s Kali statue.
“Girl, you rode the dragon in the middle of the Boston Public Garden. Are you really getting bashful on me now?”