Saturday, 22 October 2011

• Have a drink with me

  It's nearly Halloween and I'm in the mood for a ghost story.  I've only ever written one, so even though some of you have seen this before, I'm re-posting it here today. 
  
  

  Twelve Steps
  

  
  

             “Hi, my name is Jake and I’m an alcoholic.”
             “Hi Jake,” they answered, from every corner of the dusty meeting room.
             “It’s been one day since I had a drink.”
             The regulars smiled and nodded their heads, grateful for his return.  After all, Jake was one of them, one of the regulars. If Jake had fallen off the wagon, so could they all.  Just two days earlier, they'd been there when Jake announced a full year of sobriety.
             “Hi,”he’d said, barely forty eight hours earlier.  “My name is Jake and I’m an alcoholic.”
             “Hi Jake,” they’d responded in unison.
             “It’s been three hundred sixty-five days since I had a drink.”
  

              And then, after a year of sobriety, on the one year anniversary of his kid brother’s funeral, Jake Newbury allowed himself a shot of peppermint schnapps.  He drank a toast to his dead brother.  Hell, he drank a toast with his dead brother.  At AA, they didn’t need a psychic to predict what was going to happen next, but, sitting there in the community meeting room, along with the recovering lawyers and doctors, along with the school teachers, accountants and engineers, the butchers, the bakers,the candlestick makers, there sat Desdemona, the town’s resident psychic.  More than one recovering alcoholic in Princeton had, over the years, availed themselves of her services.
             “Hi, my name is Desdemona and I’m an alcoholic.”  With her big hair and her costume jewelry, dressed in her Liz Claiborne casual wear, Desdemona joined Jake at the lectern.
             “When Jake came to see me yesterday, I knew that he was troubled.  Sober, but troubled.  He asked me to make contact with his dead brother Lenny.”
             “She checked the credit limit on my Mastercard,” Jake shrugged, “and then she said that we could begin.”
             “Anyway,” she continued, “the room suddenly grew dark,” darker than the setting on her dimmer switch.  A voice seemed to float down from the ceiling.
             “Jake… Jake, is that you?”
             Jake answered.  “I’m here Lenny.”
             “I didn’t think you’d come Jake.”
             Jake shuddered, remembering, “I promised.”
             “You also promised to protect me Jake.”
             Jake was beginning to sweat in the cool confines of Desdemona’s parlor, and again, in the AA meeting room.  “I did protect you Lenny.  The only way I knew how.”
              Jake tried to block out the image... the terror in his kid brother’s eyes as they said good-bye, his brother grabbing Jake’s hand,holding on for dear life as Jake closed the lid on the simple pine box.  “Jesus, Lenny.  I figured it’d be over if they thought you were dead.”
              “Well,you were certainly convincing.”  Lenny’s whisper filled the room, as it had once filled the pine box.  “You were supposed to come back and dig me up.”
              Jake tried to block out the memory of the night he buried his kid brother alive.  It had been a private ceremony but, just as Jake expected, the Macaluso Brothers had been there.  To make sure Lenny was really dead.  They were not happy about the closed casket, demanding to see the body, to pay their last respects.  It took the rabbi’s intercession to convince the Macaluso Brothers that a closed casket was the norm in their faith.
             “We were supposed to split everything 50-50,” said Lenny.  “But you got the reward and all I got were maggots.”  It grew silent, in Desdemona’s parlor, and in the AA meeting room, waiting for Lenny to continue.  “Is that fair Jake?  I ask you, is that fair?”
             “What do you want from me?” Jake asked.
             “Have a drink with me Jake… for old times sake, have a drink with me.”
             Suddenly Jake noticed the bottle of peppermint schnapps, Lenny's favorite.  Where’d that come from?
             “You promised to dig me up,” reminded Lenny.
             “But it’s been a year,” Jake protested.
             “Dig me up,” repeated Lenny.  “Have a drink with me.”
  

             Desdemona frowned, remembering.  “I drove with Jake to the cemetery.  Under the cover of darkness, we unearthed Lenny’s coffin.”  Desdemona shuddered.  “It had been a year. The maggots had had their way with him.”
             Desdemona had spent years conversing with the dead, but coming face-to-face with a decomposing body was another thing entirely.  She knew only that she wanted to leave.  Desdemona counted the steps as she hurried back to her car. Twelve steps.  Exactly twelve steps.  “I retreated to my Plymouth, where I passed the hours until morning, while Jake and his dead brother Lenny polished off the bottle of peppermint schnapps.”
  

  Jake poured two shots and sat there,in the dark, in the cemetery, talking to his dead brother Lenny.  “Your plan didn’t work out so well,” Lenny said.  “At least not for me.”
              Jake stared into his shot glass and mumbled, “I was trying to protect you.”
              “I’m sorry if I sound bitter Jake,but could you maybe explain just how this was supposed to protect me?”   
              Jake refilled his shot glass.  “When Mom died, I promised her I’d take care of you.  You were gonna be an accountant.”
              “I was gonna be an accountant,” repeated Lenny.  “That seems so very long ago now.  A lifetime ago.”
              While Jake hauled dirt, busting his hump for the Macalusos, smelling of dirt and sweat and something else, something dangerous, but to Jake and the other drivers was why the job paid so good, while Jake busted his hump, he got Lenny a part-time job in the office.
              And it might have ended there, if only Lenny hadn’t found a problem in the general ledger.  Lenny couldn’t let it be.  He never did tell Jake exactly what he’d found, but it wasn’t long before the whispers started.  And the threats.  Jake knew he needed to do something to protect his kid brother from the Macalusos. That’s when it hit him.  They couldn’t hurt Lenny if he was already dead. If they thought he was dead.
              And so they concocted a plan.  Thank God, they agreed, their mother was no longer alive.  ‘Cause this would have killed her, for sure.  They would fake Lenny’s death.  Jake would alert the police.  And when the police picked up the Macaluso Brothers, Jake would go back and dig up his kid brother.
              It might have worked.  If Jake had come back that first night, the way they’d planned it.

             Jake looked out on the room full of recovering alcoholics.  “He thought I did it for the money.  Thought I left him there, buried alive, slowly suffocating... for the money.” Jake spit out the words.  “And I let him believe it.  How could I tell my kid brother the real reason I left him there to die.”
              In a room full of recovering alcoholics, men and women who had ruined their lives in all the usual ways, even in such a room as this, Jake’s story unnerved the crowd, regulars and newcomers alike.
              “I meant to dig him up.”  Jake paused.  “Really I did.   But I needed something to steady my nerves.  What harm could there be, I asked myself, just one bourbon.”
              But the harm was obvious.  “By the time I climbed out of the bottle, it was too late.  I left my brother there to die...” Jake explained, “for a shot and a beer.”

             Jake looked for a sympathetic face in the stunned room.  “I’m Jake,” he said, “and I’m an alcoholic.”
              “Hi Jake,” they answered in unison.
              “It’s been one day since I had a drink.”          

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