Little by Slowly: a Story of Love and Recovery

this made me see what a farce our life had been. I realized, for the first time, that I had thrown the past seven years of my life into the haze of drink and had gotten nothing out of it. There I was, a successful software developer, sitting in the city's drunk tank after getting into an argument with my girlfriend that was so stereotypically trashy that it might as well have been stolen straight from that old show Cops. We were lost, and I knew then, for the first time, that I was lost, and had been for years. My blow-up that night was an acknowledgment of that lostness. Like I said earlier, I wanted to be lost, wanted to lose myself enough to not have to chase the tail of my thoughts. But I knew then that I had gone about it in the wrong way. Kelly and I were getting lost together, but separately. We were never able to lose ourselves in each other, the way you do when you really love someone. And the worst part is that I felt like I had known it all along. In the back of my mind, for a time, I felt like the baby was going to save us, and when it was gone, I lost my last shred of hope, and I blamed her. She was, all of a sudden, responsible for my hopelessness.

  "But I also knew that I couldn't go back to that life.

  "That night, I watched, and smelled, two guys throw up all over themselves. I saw a guy so drunk that he spent over an hour intermittently stroking his flaccid penis, oblivious to the world. And I realized that I was as lost and pathetic as any one there that night, that I had thrown away all that time—the better part of my twenties were gone—and I hardly even remembered seeing them go.

  "So, I was up all night, afraid to sleep, too angry to sleep. Though, at that point, my anger was as much directed at myself as at Kelly. But when they let me out that morning, I had already decided that I was done. With Kelly. With drink. With that whole damn life."

  "You just decided and that was it."

  "Well, no. I mean, yes, I knew that it was over, but I still had to follow-through."

  "And you just ended it?"

  "Yeah," he says. "She was waiting for me that morning in the lobby of the police station. For all I know, she had been passed out there all night. She certainly looked like it.

  "As we walked home, I explained to her that I couldn't live the way we had been living anymore, drinking every night, pretending as if we'd never left college. I couldn't continue to pretend that we were doing anything other than playing house. We'd never once talked seriously about getting married. The idea, even, seemed foreign to me. I couldn't imagine being married to Kelly. We were still kids, reveling in our shared arrested development.

  "I don't think she took me seriously. I think she thought I was still angry about the miscarriage. Even as I was grabbing stuff out of our apartment that morning, she was only half-fighting me about it. Either she didn't believe I was leaving for good, or she didn't care.

  "I think she did care, though. I know I cared. You don't spend that much time with someone and not build a thousand attachments to them. I'd been in her proximity, assumed the right of her company, for seven years, and now I was planning on shutting it off, quitting all our habits, all our routines. I don't think she believed I could do it."

  "What about you? Did you believe you could do it?"

  "I was certain I could."

  "I wish I had your certainty."

  "You do. You're here aren't you? You haven't drank today."

  "I guess," she says. "So, you haven't seen her since then?"

  "I hadn't until about an hour ago."

  "You're kidding? I knew last night that you were about to meet her. I had no idea it was so soon."

  "Yeah, I was just coming back from lunch with her when you called."

  "What happened? I mean, you don't have to—"

  "No, it's alright," he says, leaning back in his chair. "I went there to tell her I was sorry for the way I treated her that night. For blaming her. She's been the last person on my list for—"

  "Your personal inventory?"

  "You read the Big Book?"

  "Most of it, yeah. But I knew about the inventory thing already."

  "Yeah, she's been the thing keeping me from progressing along the steps. I've been stuck on her for awhile now. I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but I—"

  "So, can you mark her off?"

  "No, things didn't go quite as planned."

  "What happened?"

  "She decided to tell me that she'd had an abortion. Not a miscarriage. She'd lied to me."

  "No."

  "Yep. And the worst part is that I've been carrying all this guilt. God, when I think of the research I've done on the links between drinking and miscarriages. It's pathetic. I've spent many sleepless nights blaming myself for not being able to stop drinking, for not doing a better job of keeping her from drinking. All this time I've been beating myself up about not doing more to protect the pregnancy, and here she'd decided to end it without so much as the courtesy of a conversation."

  "Do you morally object to abortion?"

  "No, not in a general way. I'm pro-choice for the most part. But, on a personal level, I could never be party to an abortion, at least not knowingly."

  "And she believes it was her choice to make alone?"

  "Yeah, and legally it is her right, but I believe she had an obligation to discuss it with me first. And I think, deep down, she knew that, or else she wouldn't have lied to me about it."

  "But if you were both still drinking the way you say you were, do you believe she made the wrong choice?"

  He looks out the window, stares at passers-by. "Probably not. The pregnancy was doomed from the start. We were nowhere near ready for that kind of responsibility."

  "You said yourself that you were still kids."

  "I know. And I should be able to absorb this more easily, but what's really bothering me… Why is it that I was able to flip a switch of change that night, the night I spent in the drunk tank, but not when she first told me she was pregnant?"

  "Who knows the reasons why these things happen? I don't know you very well, but it seems to me, from what you've said, that you've done more growing up in the past three months than you did in all the years you were with her."

  "Maybe I have."

  "But you still have to forgive her."

  "I know."

  "The sooner the better."

  "I thought I was supposed to be helping you, not the other way around."

  "We'll help each other," she says, looking at him, and it's the first time he feels that he can see longing in her eyes. It's the first time he sees her pulling toward him. Maybe. Or, maybe, it is only wishful thinking. "You should call her."

  "Now?"

  "As good a time as any."

  "I don't know."

  "Sure you do. You can apologize, say that you're sorry for the past, sorry for all the things you did that might've hurt her. Then you can tell her that you forgive her, and that you're moving on."

  "You don't think it would be better to say these things to her face to face."

  "You tried that."

  "Yeah, but—"

  "You could always call her and arrange to meet her later on. Either way, I think you should strike while the iron is hot."

  "You practicing your clichés for AA?

  "Sorry."

  "Okay. Maybe I will call her," he says and stands up, pulling his phone from his pants pocket. He dials Kelly's number, and motions to Jessi that he's going to take the call outside. She waves him off with a don't-worry-about-it motion.

  When Kelly picks up, he can tell immediately that she is sitting in a bar. She must've went to drink as soon as they left each other just over an hour ago.

  "Kelly?" he says into the phone.

  "Sam?"

  "Yeah, it's me again."

  "What's up?"

  "I wanted to apologize about earlier."

  "Don't worry about it."

  "I just want you to know that I don't blame you for anything that happened between us when we were together."

  "Okay."

  "And I wanted to say that I'm sorry if I hur
t you in any way during—"

  "Sam, are you trying…? Is this an AA thing? Are you trying to make amends with me?" she asks, sounding defensive.

  "Kelly—"

  "I don't need you to—"

  "Will you just listen to me for a second? I need to let you know that I forgive you, and I'd really be grateful if you could find it—"

  "Fuck you, Sam. I don't need your hollow AA step clearing. I don't need your forgiveness."

  "Kelly, I'm just trying to move on with my life."

  "Looks like you have. I haven't heard from you in three months and then I get—"

  "I'm sorry."

  "I don't need you to be sorry."

  "Well, I've done what I can. I wish I could end this on a happier note."

  "Are you serious? You know what Sam, not only did I have an abortion, but there's a reason why I didn't tell you about it."

  "This ought to be—"

  "It wasn't your business. It wasn't even your baby."

  "What?"

  "You heard me."

  "I don't believe you. I think you're just angry—"

  "You remember the house warming party we went to at Chris and Tracy's?"

  "Kelly, this isn't—"

  "You passed out—surprise, surprise—and Chris and I were in the basement playing pool. Tracy had gone to bed."

  "You bitch."

  "That's my Sammy," she says, and there is so much vitriol, and, yet, so much pleasure in her voice at having put him on the defense again. All he can do is end the call. He stares at his phone for a second. Then he looks back at Jessi, who is now staring at him through the plate glass window, and he can tell that she's heard at least some of his half of the conversation.

  He walks to the edge of the sidewalk, by the curb, sits down, and stares at his phone again as if it were the bearer of bad news.

  "So, that went well," Jessi says from behind him. She bends