The World Brought Close

Chris Valle. Between Love and Madness Lies Obsession. 2013. Oil and acrlyllic. 40 × 45 inches.

All church basements looked the same: white drywall, fluorescent lights, metal folding chairs. Shepard went directly to the coffee urn and levered his dose of bitter liquid, felt the familiar crunch of Styrofoam between his teeth. There were no special effects down here: no carved wood crucifixes, golden chalices, stained glass or gilt—down here it was just guilt. He took a seat on a metal chair and watched the waves in the linoleum.

It was a small meeting with a new-agey theme: Sober Awakenings. The moderator had six years and called herself Mother Kai. Shepard had been sober ten; this was his first trip away from his family on Long Island in almost as much time. The Casualty Insurance Conference kept participants on a rigorous schedule. After hours of lectures on risk numbers and land acquisitions, everybody headed for the bars like lepers wading into the Ganges; Shepard headed for a meeting.

The Unitarian church was just a four-block walk from his hotel in suburban Boston. One guy was sharing about climbing telephone poles with a flask of Jack Daniels. He wore a denim shirt with Verizon Tech Support stitched across the pocket. The laces of his work boots were untied. Every time he moved his foot, they clicked on the floor. “One day, I touched the wrong wires and BAM.” He bumped his fists together. “Ten milli-amps right through me. Fell off the pole. Broke my collar, my wrist and dislocated my shoulder.”

A ripple of surprise floated through the group: chairs squeaked back in consolation, bodies repositioned themselves. Shepard had heard worse. Mother Kai shook her head; her feather earrings oscillated in sympathy. He wondered what she’d be like in the sack. Not that he was remotely attracted to her tangle of grey hair or doughy body, but AA meetings were always good to pick up some strange. For the past several weeks the idea of this trip had hovered in his mind as possibly his last great adventure. However, Mother Kai’s long sweat-shirt and black leggings placed her as far outside the sexual world as a nun’s habit with wings. Women like that had given up on sex. For them, it was all about aromatherapy and banana bread.

His wife Trixie had become an expert in baked goods. She had twenty pounds on Mother Kai, yet, thankfully, still remained a bottle blonde. She had a pie for every problem, and a cookie for each catastrophe. She’d stuck with him through the bad years: the arrests, the car wrecks, the different jobs, kneading and frosting her way through all of his fuckups. Finally, he was glad to give her some stability. And though they hadn’t had sex in years, he still felt a kind of loyalty. Not something he would easily break for just any piece of tail.

Around the room, other people were sharing. He focused on the scars on his knuckles and listened. Over the years, people in pain had become his music. Testimonies of addiction and remorse were songs from his youth he never grew tired of hearing.

One kid started speaking, and the room vibrated with his froggy voice. He looked like a teenager, but Shepard figured from his story he must be in his early twenties. The kid spoke as if underwater, speaking from swamps, from mud, from someplace deep where sound doesn’t reach. Each word seemed to be pulled out of him with a hook.

It was a familiar tale about a father with a belt and a mother with a handkerchief. His name was Farley. He had been sober a year, but had recently relapsed. Shepard could tell he’d just come off a bender. His hair fell in black strings over his eyes, and he kept tucking it behind his ears. A tall kid, he sat hunched over and crossed his leg at the knee. Shepard stared at the kid’s dirty tennis shoe tapping the air. He avoided his...