The Journey Ch. 09

*Smack*

"So, you're doing okay then? With the not drinking?" Connie spared a glance back at me, then fouled one off.

"Seem to be. I haven't had a drink since I moved in with Jane."

"And you... sorry, I don't know how much you want to talk about this."

"It's cool, Conn. I talk about it all the time with Jane and Diego and Abuela, and Mama on FaceTime. Even once or twice with Father Danny at St. Mary's. It turns out I kinda like the guy, which was a bit of a surprise to me. But my point is, you can ask if you want. I've tried to not turn into the kind of alcoholic who makes their entire personality about being an alcoholic. I've met a few like that at meetings. It's all they'll talk about, much to the boredom of people who want to have a conversation about anything else. I don't mind discussing it, if a friend wants to know how I'm doing, but we can talk around it too."

"Aight," she said, then thumped another ball over the top of the machines. "So, the program's going okay for you?"

"I guess it is. I've been spending a lot more time worrying about Jane lately than myself. That's good and bad, I guess. I don't seem to have space in my head to be thinking about drinking, but that's because I'm keeping such a close eye on her. Watching for mood swings. Sometimes she just starts to get nervous and jittery out of nowhere. Dr. Blythe says all I can do is be there for her. Talk if she wants. Just be company if she doesn't."

"I still think she should sue the ever-loving fuck out of those yokels. Until they don't have a pot to piss in."

*Smack* She hit an especially vicious line drive on her last ball.

"You and me both. I've brought up the idea of going to talk to Megan, that's the lawyer that laid the smack-down on the cops when we went to get her with Addison, but she doesn't seem interested in revisiting the situation."

Connie pulled open the door and handed me the bat again.

"I still can't believe your ex ended up white-knighting your current girlfriend."

"Right? I set that bridge on fire and she still let me cross when I needed help. Life's fucking weird."

~~ Washington, D.C., One week later ~~

"Jane?" I mumbled sleepily.

I'd just reached out and found her side of the bed empty. I looked towards the clock on her side table, seeing it was three in the morning, then realized there were red and blue strobing lights coming through the window, lighting up the ceiling. Jane stood at the window, outlined by the flashing lights.

"Babe? Everything okay?"

"Fine," she said, her voice tight. I got out of bed and moved to stand behind her. There was a police car in the alley behind our townhome, and two cops were talking to a young black man, their flashlights almost, but not quite in his face. As I slipped my arms around Jane from behind, I realized she was holding her phone up to the window, recording a video of the scene below.

"Everything cool down there?"

"So far." Her attention didn't waiver. I realized she wasn't going to move from the spot until whatever this was had ended.

"Wonder what's going on?"

"Don't know, the lights woke me and they were already talking to this guy when I looked out the window."

"Do you know who he is? Does he live on the block?"

"I have no idea."

There didn't seem anything else for me to say, Jane's attention was fully on the scene below. We watched in silence.

The young man produced a wallet and handed one of the officers his ID. After another minute or two of conversation the man pulled out a set of keys, and used them to unlock the door next to the garage the police had had him up against then gave them a gesture that clearly conveyed see, asshole? Apparently satisfied, the cop gave him his ID back, and the two of them got back in their patrol car. The young man watched them kill the strobing red and blue lights and slowly drive away. They were a hundred feet down the alley when he lifted both arms high over his head and gave them a double-barreled middle finger, then slipped inside his garage.

I laughed.

Jane didn't. As she stopped recording and set her phone down, I noticed she was shaking.

"Babe?"

"I'm fine," she said, in the weakest voice I'd ever heard come from her.

I wrapped her up in a hug. Her breathing had sped up and the shaking intensified. I said nothing, holding her tightly. A small sob escaped from her against my shoulder.

"It's okay. You're okay Janey." It was the first time I ever used her mom's pet name for her, and it seemed to settle her down a bit. I moved us to sit on the edge of the bed. She took a few deep gulps of air.

"Sorry, I don't know what got into me," she said, then sniffed loudly. I reached over to grab her a tissue from the box on her bedside table.

"Seriously? I do."

She gave a small grunt of displeasure.

"You know," I said, unsure of if I was getting ready to step on a landmine, "You said you'd wished your problem was you were traumatized instead of embarrassed about Wakeville. I think both are true."

"I'm fine," she whispered

"Bullshit," I said, as kindly as I could.

"Can you just hold me while I go back to sleep?"

"Anything you want babe."

The next morning, I took the bullshit by the horns.

"Hey, get up sleepyhead," I said, nudging Jane under the covers.

"Nggnggh," she said, or something to that effect.

"C'mon, get up. We're going to lunch."

"What?" Jane rose on one elbow and rubbed her eye.

"You heard me. I thought we'd run out to El Escondite and grab a bite. I can have you back in time to get ready for your class this afternoon."

"What time do they open?" She looked at the clock on the side table.

"Don't worry, the timing's perfect. I want to get out of here in a half hour, though, so jump in the shower."

We managed to leave the house forty-five minutes later, with me behind the wheel of Jane's car. I insisted on driving, telling Jane she looked too tired and besides I knew where we were going and she'd only been there once. We spent the ride mostly in silence, one of my playlists on the sound system. The Latin beat didn't seem to be lifting her spirits, so I switched to one of her seventies R&B playlists. When even Sheryl Lynn's Got to Be Real didn't lift her spirits, I knew I was doing the right thing.

Jane was so preoccupied with her thoughts, she didn't notice that I wasn't driving to Annandale, until i pulled into the parking lot of the small professional building. She finally noticed something was amiss.

"What's this place? I thought we were going to lunch?"

"We will. I just need to run an errand. Come with me?" I turned off the car and got out. Jane followed, clearly puzzled at what I was up to. I took her hand and led her into the building and towards the back of the first floor. When we got to the unmarked door, I let us into the small waiting room. The door to the back room was open, as usual, and I headed straight through it.

"Good morning Viv, how are--" The woman seated in one of the two leather chairs in the small office stopped when she saw I wasn't alone.

"Morning Patricia, I want to introduce you to Jane. Although I've talked about her enough you probably feel like you know her already. Jane, this is Dr. Patricia Blythe."

"Um... Hi, Jane, it's nice to meet you. Viv is right, I have heard a lot about you," my therapist said.

Jane looked confused but shook her hand. "Nice to meet you too?" Jane clearly had no idea what I was up to.

"I'm doing really well this week Doc. No relapses or crises or anything. However, Jane needs to talk to someone, very badly. So, I'm going to give up my hour this week so you can help her out. Really appreciate it!"

I turned and walked out, closing the door behind me and taking a seat in the waiting room. I half expected the door to fly open and one of two things happen immediately: either Jane storming out to the car, or Patricia coming out to yell at me. To my surprise, neither thing happened. Time passed, and I forced myself to relax back into the chair. After a while I pulled out my phone and started scrolling my BlueSky feed to distract myself from trying to hear voices through the door. Towards the end of the hour, the woman whose appointment followed mine came into the waiting room. I didn't know her name, just knew her well enough to pick her out of a crowd. Enough to exchange a friendly nod. Too often early in my relationship with Patricia, I'd been crying in a session and didn't trust my voice when I came out.

"Oh dear, am I early?" she said, checking her watch.

"No, I'm just... well, someone else took my spot."

"Do I need to come back, or..." She looked put out.

"Oh no, nothing like that!" I said quickly. "My friend will be done and we'll be going. You're good."

I heard shuffling through the door, and then it opened.

"See?" I said, rising from my seat, "Right on time."

Jane emerged from the interior room clutching a piece of paper, her eyes red and puffy. I immediately wrapped her in a hug.

"You okay?" I whispered in her ear. The only response was a nod that I could feel as her hair flopped against the side of my head.

"Hi Amanda, can you give me just a moment and I'll be ready for you?" Patricia asked the other woman in the room. "Viv, can I have a quick word?"

I let go of Jane, giving her a searching look to make sure she was okay.

"I'm good," she said.

"Okay, be right back."

I followed Patricia into her office and she shut the door behind us.

"How'd it go?" I asked.

"I'm not going to tell you how it went, Viv. That's for Jane to decide if she wants you to know. I am going to tell you, that was very inappropriate, bringing Jane in unannounced like that."

"I'm sorry, I just... I didn't know what else to do. She's really not dealing with her thing well and..." I trailed off. Patricia looked really angry.

"I know your heart's in the right place. And you're right, she needs to talk to someone. But it can't be me. You aren't in couples counseling and I'm not a couple's counselor. It's not ethical for me to see both you and her as patients."

"Okay. I'm really sorry."

"Like I said, you meant well. I gave her a list of some therapists who specialize in trauma therapy. That's what I think she needs help with. Also, some resources that might help her find someone who works for her. I'm afraid I'm not that familiar with D.C. therapists."

"Thanks Patricia, I really appreciate it."

"She does need help, though. Make sure she gets some."

"I'm on it, Doc."

I collected Jane, apologized to the next patient for the holdup, and we headed to lunch.

"I hope you're not too mad at me," I said to Jane after I'd ordered us two street taco platters at El Escondite.

"No," she said. She hadn't met my eyes since we'd sat down, and was idly tracing shapes on the table with her finger.

"Want to talk about how it went?"

"No." Then she shook her head and added, "Yes. I don't know."

"That's kinda how I was after my first encounter with therapy. I mean, that was me for the first like... three weeks in rehab, really."

"She's easy to talk to."

"Right? I'm really glad my counselor at Pinewood recommended her to me."

Jane fell silent and I decided the best strategy at the moment was to wait. It was a long wait.

"She said she thinks I need therapy or to join a support group."

I puffed out a breath. She didn't seem against the idea, just unsure. I could work with that.

"I think she's right. You went through some trauma. I think you could use some help with that."

"Why can't I just talk to you about it?"

I chuckled. "You don't have a great track record with that so far. Honestly, I think a support group would be really helpful. More so than a therapist, maybe. You were angry at yourself when you were surprised Wakeville happened. Like you said, you didn't believe that could happen to you. In a group you'll find all kinds of folks, some who also didn't think something like this could happen. It could help you deal with your feelings about it."

"Hmm," she played with the spoon that came with her iced tea. "How does it... how does group work? Your AA meetings are basically group sessions, right? Tell me how that helps you not drink. What it does for you. And how did you get to believe it was the thing to help you?"

I thought for a moment, then got up and went around the table to sit next to her instead of across from her, pulling my phone out of my pocket.

"Let me show you something, then we can talk about what it does for me." I pulled up a YouTube link I had bookmarked.

When I'd gotten out of rehab and had access to my email again, my roommate at Pinewood had sent me a link to a song called Something About You. Rhonda had graduated a week before, and I'd been unsure if we'd stay in touch, but the video she'd sent me hit me like a hammer. We'd been regular email buddies since. She'd done a better job of staying sober than I had, on her third try through an in-patient place. Since she'd sent me this video, I'd been watching it at least once a week.

It started with a scruffy looking man in his thirties, standing in a stairwell, obviously reluctant for what comes next. He finally shoves himself off the wall, and joins nine men of different ages seated in a circle in a gymnasium. The counselor asks who would like to start. After getting non-verbal answers from the others, he turns to the man.

Michael, would you like to share with the group?

Cut to Michael's face and his expression says he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. Like he might not make it to tomorrow. After an internal struggle, he reluctantly gets up and moves to the middle of the circle as the song fades in.

"Is this a music video?" Jane asked me.

"Shh, just watch."

A man starts singing in a high voice, about missing his love, about having fucked up and being wrong.

I miss the touch of morning sun, making silhouettes of us, way back when we had our paradise.

Michael raises his fists above his shoulders in a rather pathetic flexing pose, then starts doing a shuffling ersatz line-dance, utterly devoid of emotion. He finishes and drops his arms to his side, looking defeated, as the chorus starts.

There's something 'bout you, Keeping me sober.

I was drowning in the moment, and now I'm holding onto you.

"Who is the artist?" Jane asked.

"Elderbrook. Now, shh."

The longer he goes, the more depressed he looks, until one of the other men, a hugely muscled black man with a shaved head, stands and slowly walks to face Michael. They both slowly raise their fists, and then repeat Michael's quasi-line dance in unison as the song picks up from soft electronic keyboards to brass horns, uplifting and powerful. The man never takes his eyes off Michael's face and Michael is ever so slightly less hesitant.

After the first chorus, several more members of the circle join them, each with a look of determination on their face. By the next chorus the entire group is up, from the youngest members to a man approaching eighty, all dancing in unison. It's energetic, but the choreography gets more disciplined and complex the more people join in. They move as one, each of the men with varying looks of determination, or even joy, on their faces.

By the time the video ended, tears were rolling down my cheeks, as they did almost every time I watched this video.

Jane noticed, and put her arm around me.

"Baby, are you okay?"

"Yeah," I said, although my voice cracked. I cleared my throat, and tried again. "Yeah I'm good, Babe."

"That really affected you."

I nodded. "When I got out of rehab, I'd accepted the idea that group helped me, but I still didn't like it. This is the best metaphor I've ever seen for what group is, and how it helps. It's what really made me go all in."

Jane eyes went back to my phone. "Explain it to me."

"Group was always hard for me. I like therapy a lot better, it's one on one, just you and someone you grow to trust. It can be really embarrassing to get up in front of a group of strangers, and tell them how you're failing, or afraid, or desperate, or sad. It's deeply uncomfortable."

I rewound the video with my finger to the point where the black man stood to join Michael, to share the dance with him, then let it run again.

"This is what makes group work for me," I said, talking over the music. "The main character is hurting, god he's such a good actor in this, you can almost see every tragedy he's had to deal with on his face! But he doesn't want to get up and expose himself to these people, even though he probably knows that doing so could help him. So, this guy gets up, and he does it with him. To show that he also has been through some shit, and that's it's okay to expose yourself. To ask for help. So, he helps him. See how the dance is just a little more confident when it's the two of them instead of just Michael? Then these guys join, and they all get better still."

She pointed to an overweight man in the video, still sitting on the sidelines with a reluctant, almost surly look on his face. "He clearly doesn't want to get up and dance."

"Right, but here, look at the expression on the old man's face as he gets up. He knows. He doesn't really want to, but he knows for this to work they all have to do it together. So he's just 'okay, time to do this', and he gets up to join in."

"And then this guy," she points to a young, skinny black man who's looking around, trying to make the decision to join in. You can tell he's reluctant but you can also see he's psyching himself up, watching the others as they join in."

"This is really moving," she said. "There are layers I didn't see until you pointed stuff out."

"Mm-hmm. If you put aside the dancing for a minute, by the end they're all doing it together. Confidently. Some of them even have joy on their faces."

Jane nodded. "I see what you mean."

"Finding a group, one that has people who have been through something similar to yourself, gives you this. The safety of knowing you're with people who understand what you've gone through. Are going through. And it gives me the courage to open up, share my problems. Because I'm not the only one going through it. Hurting. Struggling. Because we're all doing it together. And then once I have the confidence that if I open myself up to them, no one will judge me or make fun of me, that lets me be honest. To really expose myself."

"I can see why this metaphor works for you, what with the dancing."

I laughed, as the waitress showed up with our tacos and set them on the table. As she left, I wrapped my arm around Jane and pulled her closer.

"You think I should find a support group?" She phrased it as a question, but I'd known her long enough to know she meant it as something she'd decided to try.

"I do."

"Okay." She picked up the piece of paper off the table where Dr. Blythe had written down the name of a few D.C. support groups. "I guess I can get started researching this when I get home from work tonight."

I kissed the side of her head.

"That's my Professor. Now let's eat before this gets cold."

~~ Washington, D.C. ~~

"Hey, how'd it go?" I asked. I was sitting on our couch, doing homework with my laptop perched on a pillow on my lap.

"Okay," Jane said. She hung her purse on the coat rack on the wall at the top of our stairs. "I didn't share this week, there were a lot of people who needed to get stuff off their chest."

It was Jane's third week of attending her new support group. She hadn't cared for the first one she'd been to, but the second group she tried seemed to have stuck. It met Thursday mornings, and she usually was done in time to come home and debrief with me before heading to Howard for work and afternoon class.