Woodwork class is a revelation, another sort of balm. I find I enjoy the act of whittling, paring, honing. The teacher – a middle-aged woman with a shrunken, balled jumper, which presses her body into fleshy folds （her antidote to stirring any kind of arousal in all these sex-starved men; she does it very well, I think） – stands too close, breathes her tuna-and-onion breath on me and tells me I’m naturally talented. I am that, alright, that was never in question. It’s the other stuff that’s difficult.
The rain outside continues. It hasn’t stopped since the moment I arrived. The Man Above’s out to drown us all.
I wasn’t expecting to feel such guilt, but then I guess I didn’t exactly have any expectations, not having made the choice myself to be here. I was cajoled – no, coerced, no, let’s get real: threatened. Over and over in my mind – how is this the best for Tommy? How is he surviving without me?
I concoct a plan: submission, dedication to the cause, discipline. As soon as I’m allowed my first phone call I’ll convince my father that it’s in all our best interests for me to go home early and continue my recovery there. Mrs O’Malley is probably overwhelmed with the responsibility of a toddler and a dog. How much better for Tommy to have his mother around. Yes yes yes. Two weeks of this is all I can manage. Father wouldn’t last a night in here: all this emotion, all these people, with their smells, their vulnerability, their damage, their desire for connection, their stories, their pain, their sharing, their dissembling, their laughing, their crying, their dumping, their need, their need, their need.
My breathing is shallow and sharp and concentrating on it in meditation just makes it worse. I don’t share in the meetings. Everyone else seems to find a connection, but this place makes me lonelier than I have ever been. Or perhaps I am facing that loneliness for the first time. It’s strange to think I really might have been addicted. My body tells me I was; my mind tells me I was not, I am not, I am not the same as the people in here. I just drank too much because I missed my former life of excitement and colour and attention. No one could possibly understand that high. And the ferocious comedown in its absence.
But exactly when did I start drinking ‘too much’？ A few drinks after I’d come off stage, certainly. Only normal, everyone did that. The time of my pregnancy? Did I? I was so conflicted, never sure I had made the right decision, so alone in that decision, which seemed so out of character, so like I was out to prove a point to Howard, to the world. I am capable of motherhood and I will be brilliant and beautiful. Romantic notions, always.
Is your alcohol abuse linked to becoming a mother, Sonya? Answers, justifications, denials rush in. Of course not of course not of course not.
13
The day finally comes. Fourteen days in and it’s time for my first phone call home. The craving for my boys has taken over any other, the worst of the effects of the chemical addiction having left my body, the tremors over, except for today. With shaking hands – the most severe since day one – I try calling my father’s mobile straight after jelly-for-dinner, and it rings out and out, the unanswered dialling tone sounding like a kind of keening. The winged creatures start to push their way into my throat. ‘Fucking answer, please answer.’ A line of people stand waiting for their turn. ‘Not there, love,’ the man directly behind me says. I slam the phone into its cradle and wonder if my father is avoiding me and what I will do if he never answers.
The following day my anxiety is so high I almost rouse her, my high-kicking sidekick. She hasn’t come anywhere near me in this place, disgusted, I think, by its dullness, its routine, its grey sobriety. Perversely, I miss her.
Visiting hours are two to five, and family members and loved ones can come at any stage between these times. If it’s a minute past five they won’t be let in. He may be a cold bastard but he wouldn’t do that to us; he only enforced this situation for our good. I tell myself this even as the hours slip by, trying to push away the knowledge that he abandoned us before, when I really wasn’t coping on any level. I pace between the front desk and the patch of gravel in front of the main door, not wanting to go far. For the first time since I arrived, the rain has dried up and a few intense rays of sunshine penetrate the thick blanket of cloud. Mr Sunshine has come out to play, Yaya. I lift my face towards the sky, staring directly at the concentration of light, until black spots form and spin. Wheee! Spinnies. My body aches.
I check in at reception every five minutes. ‘You’ll call me on the loudspeaker when they arrive? I can hear it outside.’