Fiction

Humility

Patrick Nevins

Ben Easy had hoped to get out of Halloween, but his meeting isn’t until eight, and the trick-or-treaters seem to come earlier every year, so he’s answering the door and handing out mini Snickers and Milky Ways and 3 Musketeers to children in store-bought SpongeBob SquarePants costumes, while his wife, Kristin, due in two weeks, relaxes on the love seat and watches the news. She’ll sip cranberry juice and watch the Halloween episodes of a few sitcoms, on which the children will be professionally outfitted as vampires and witches and werewolves. To be fair, some of the children that come to the door have gone for those classic characters; smeared white makeup and a black sheet worn as a cape makes Dracula; a plush black cat in a girl’s arm and a witch’s hat from the Halloween outlet in the mall makes… a witch. But with at least two hours of light left in the day, it’s hard for Ben to feign even amused fright for them. So he smiles and drops two candy bars in each bag, and then returns to his chair to work on his notes for tonight’s discussion. In the hours before he chairs his AA group’s meetings, he scribbles his thoughts on how best to introduce that night’s topic on a white notepad. Kristin has pulled the notepad from his hands more than once to get him to help with dinner, or to just tell her about his day, which he never wants to.

“How’s the sermon coming, Preacher?” she asks.

“Cut it out,” he says.

He hates that nickname. He isn’t preaching; he just chooses one of the suggested topics and introduces it with a question or maybe a quick story from his life. But he does hope his stories – even though at twenty-nine he’s younger than most members – are helpful to the others. Among the topics he’s covered since becoming Chairperson in May are ‘attitude,’ ‘fear,’ and ‘making amends.’ Tonight’s topic, which has been giving him a particularly hard time, is ‘humility.’ He takes his role as Chair seriously, but he doesn’t equate himself with a preacher. Kristin ought to know how these things go, anyway; she goes to her own meetings at lunch.

In a week, Ben and Kristin will be three years sober. Three years ago, in May, Kristin moved out when she and Ben had an argument that ended with Kristin in St. Monica’s with a broken hand. There’d not been any drunken fighting of the COPS variety – Ben hadn’t had a drink the morning he fractured two of Kristin’s metacarpals with a bicycle pump - but her constant drinking had dredged up a lot of resentment (a topic Ben had a few stories about) and in the sober light of day he lashed out. He failed to bring her home from her girlfriend’s apartment, and a few weeks later she sent herself back to St. Monica’s with alcohol poisoning. Could’ve killed herself. They continued drinking. But by fall, at the urging of Ben’s father, who was in recovery, they’d decided enough was enough.

“Someone’s coming up the steps,” Kristin says. She positively glows. At thirty-three, this may be her only child, so her body is putting everything into this pregnancy: Her blond hair and pink cheeks shine. Her tits, which Ben has to remind himself to be gentle with, have doubled in size, and her belly is a perfect egg, the top tipped back into her sternum. There is no part of her that doesn’t bubble with new life – even her teeth look whiter. She’s swelled up in order to pass some of herself on to their baby, but sometimes he fears there’s something wrong with it and it’s not taking her offerings, and that’s why she’s looking better than ever instead of slowly fading.

There are two boys on the concrete porch. One wears a hockey mask and carries a plastic knife. Ben remembers those movies from his childhood and figures Jason will always be a Halloween standby. The other boy isn’t so recognizable: His hair is dusted gray and twisted and sprayed into a bird’s nest, and makeup gives him a five o’clock shadow. It takes Ben a second to notice the brown bottle he’s carrying because the sleeves of his blazer (must be his dad’s) hang over his hands.

The boy’s have said ‘trick-or-treat,’ but Ben was so alarmed by the bottle that he hadn’t really heard it, and now he wonders if the words sounded deeper than they ought to.

“What are you supposed to be?” he says to the boy with the bottle.

The boy, as if on cue, begins swaying side to side – drunkenly, now Ben gets it – and says, “Ahm a drunk, you see? The boss done gimme mah pink slip, and the old lady’s done left me.”

Jason giggles behind his mask; the performance must get better at every house. Ben swipes the bottle from The Drunk’s hand. The label’s been peeled away; it’s empty and warm. Ben is used to the bottle shape in his hand; he buys Ale 8 at Kroger to satisfy his craving for the cool mouth of a bottle against his lips in summertime. But when he lifts the bottle to his nose, the alcoholic tinge stirs his resentment.

“Where’d you get this?”

“My dad,” The Drunk says soberly. “He drank it, not me.”

“Aren’t you boys a little old for trick-or-treating? What are you, fourteen?”

“Twelve,” The Drunk says.

“I’m only eleven,” Jason says. Through the eyeholes in his mask, he’s eyeing the candy bowl.

“Can I have my bottle back, now?” The Drunk asks.

Ben tucks the bottle in his armpit so he can dish out the candy and get rid of them. “Don’t you think it’s a little inappropriate, being ‘a drunk’ for Halloween?”

The Drunk pouts.

“I think I ought to keep this,” Ben says, waving the bottle. “You can just be a bum for the rest of the night.”

“Give it back!” The Drunk grabs the bottle and pulls. Ben holds tight, and the struggle sends a couple candy bars over the bowl’s edge. Jason’s so glued to the pulling match he doesn’t pick them up.

“Let go, Kid!”

“Give me it!”

The bottle slips and hits the concrete and sprays brown glass across the porch.

“Get out of here!” Ben yells, and the boys bound down the steps and up the sidewalk.

“What’s going on, Baby?” Kristin calls from the living room.

Inside, Ben explains what’s happened and swears they’re not doing Halloween anymore.

“Why didn’t you just let it go?”

“Kid was making a goddamned joke out of us.”

“Out of us?” Kristin says, the words riding a laugh as they spill out.

“Yeah. Me and you and every alcoholic we know. Making a goddamned joke out of our disease.”

“Oh, please. Enough with the self-righteousness.”

Ben goes to get the broom. Kristin calls out that someone’s coming up the steps.

“Trick-or-treating is over,” he says.

“I don’t think it’s a trick-or-treater.”

Ben steps back into the living room and sees through the front window a man, probably not much older than him, but heavier in his sweatshirt and jeans. The dad. The kid couldn’t have left more than five minutes ago, but the parents are giving them cell phones as soon as they can talk, so he’s not surprised to see Dad show up so fast.

“Baby,” Kristin says, taking hold of his sleeve, “be nice to him. Tell him it was an accident and you didn’t mean to cause any trouble. We’re still new in this neighborhood.”

Ben pulls his arm away and steps outside. He sets down the dustpan and leans the broom against the house. The sun’s falling behind the houses that stretch out across street, throwing orange light into the horizon. But in front of this scene, Dad’s grinding his shoes into the broken glass. He crosses his arms and says, “You want to tell me what the hell happened here?”

Ben had hoped to have a constructive chat with the guy; make him see that what his kid is up to isn’t such a hot idea. Especially since The Drunk and Jason are on the sidewalk, leaning against an Explorer that’s been left running. But the guy’s attitude and the beer on his breath ruin any chance of that.

“I’m looking for an explanation, myself,” Ben says. “Did your kid steal the bottle or were you stupid enough to think it would make a good prop?”

Dad is stunned. He grinds his feet again. “Who in the hell do you think you are, the Halloween police?”

“I just don’t think your kid’s costume is very appropriate. It’s offensive.”

“Oh, I see,” Dad says. “You’re some kind of religious teetotaler.”

Ben hates that word. It sounds like something left over from Prohibition.

Dad puts a finger in Ben’s face. “Stay away from my son, got it?” Then he’s corralling the kids into the Explorer. Christ, Ben’s lost this one; off the guy goes thinking he’s a religious nut.

“That’s nice,” Ben says. “Drink and drive with the kids in tow. That’s good parenting.”

“You son of a bitch!”

Dad spins around and charges up the steps. He throws a wide right hook; Ben ducks and plows his head into the man’s chest, but instead of sending the man on his back, he loses his footing in the glass and pulls him down on top of him. Shards prick his back. It hurts worse to try and free himself than it does to take the punches he’s getting.

“Get him, Dad!”

Ben has to take only three knocks to the face, one he’s certain has cut him above an eye. The punches slide off him and land in the glass, and the man nurses his knuckles as he straddles him. He takes advantage of this to slug the man in the gut. The man falls away, bent in half. Ben gets up and draws his foot back to kick the man’s teeth in when a muffled scream stops him. Kristin’s at the window, clutching the phone. The fighters heave, trying to find their breath. A Louisville Metro Police car comes down the street with its lights flashing. Ben figures the fight was a draw.

The police, a white man and a black man, both graying, exchange smirks as they approach the fighters. Once they figure out whose house they’re at, the white officer asks, “You men been drinking tonight?”

“Only this asshole,” Ben says, nodding toward his attacker. He licks his fingers and presses on his cut.

“How do you explain this broken beer bottle?”

“That is a mystery,” the black officer says.

“Officers,” Dad says, “This guy was harassing my kid over there.”

The Drunk and Jason are watching the show from the windows of the Explorer, shoving Ben’s candy bars in their mouths.

“We got a call that there was an assault taking place,” the white officer says. “Is that what happened? Mr.,” he checks his notes, “Mr. Easy said something to your son, so you came over here to give him a piece of your mind?”

Dad offers an affirmative mumble.

“Look,” Ben says, “I don’t want anything except for this guy to get the fuck off my porch.”

“That’s fine, Mr. Easy. But let’s not have anymore trouble out of you, all right?”

“Out of me? I’m not the one who started this.”

Dad slinks back to the sidewalk with the black officer.

“Calm down, sir.”

“I’ll calm down when everyone gets off my fucking back.”

“Now, hold on, Mr. Easy. No one’s trying to do you any harm.”

To blow out his anger, Ben makes an exaggerated grab at the broom and swings the tip of it close to the officer’s face and says, “Then get out of my way!” The officer’s eyes bulge and his smirk stiffens.

“I promise you I was only going to sweep. I wasn’t going to hit a cop with a broom.” It’s late when Kristin finally bails Ben out, so after he showers the jail off they go straight to bed. Tomorrow they’ll figure out how they’re going to pay the court costs. Ben doesn’t want the money to come from Kristin’s parents, but his don’t have it, and he can’t think of any other way to come up with it. Right now he’s most embarrassed about missing his meeting; from the jail he called Will B., the Secretary and his sponsor, and asked him to lead the discussion on ‘humility.’ He didn’t say he was locked up.

His group meets on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and will discuss a topic for several meetings or interrupt it to greet new members, so Ben hasn’t missed his chance to have his say about ‘humility.’ The next night, Wednesday, he catches another group’s meeting and sits silently in the back. Thursday, after he clears the dinner dishes, and Kristin is settled on the love seat with the new issues of People and Us Weekly, he takes his Schwinn Commuter (bought with his first paycheck from St. Monica’s) from the garage, checks his tires, and rolls up his right cuff to keep oil off his jeans. This is the one trick he’s learned from other cyclists; he doesn’t wear a helmet. He rides by Bowman Field, where in the distance a handful of single-engine planes are parked (it’s something he’d like to do one day, ride in one of those over the city), and then up Pee Wee Reese Road past a golf course (Will’s invited him to play, but he can’t see himself out there with bankers and CEOs and the doctors who snub him in St. Monica’s halls). Then he’s under a canopy of trees, whose thinning leaves crackle into a fine dust that rides on the breeze, and finally he’s into Seneca Park, where joggers and dog-walkers are spaced out on the track, and he often passes other cyclists. Whoops and cries reach him from a touch football game. Then he takes Lexington Road to Frankfort Avenue. The tavern there isn’t one he and Kristin used to go to; they closed down the Highlands bars, between St. Matthews and downtown, where no one goes to drink, though it’s been three years – maybe they do, now. But the tavern tests him every time he passes it, the red awning stretched across the row of windows like a giant, relaxed eyelid.

His group meets in the arts building of Trinity High School, a swanky Catholic school. Sometimes, his eyes drift away from the circle of alcoholics and toward the art on the walls: reproductions of things he’s seen before but can’t name except for “The Scream.” In these moments, he wonders how things might be different if his parents had sent him to Catholic school (they’re Catholic, after all). Maybe he would’ve gone to college, like Kristin. Maybe he’d be something other than a glorified janitor. But there’s no point in that kind of thinking. And he’s too hard on himself. Director of Environmental Services for St. Monica’s is nothing to sneeze at. On good days, he feels he has his staff under control and is contributing to the hospital’s mission – that he’s got a role in the healing. No one will come to a dirty hospital. On bad days, he suspects half his staff are addicts and fears that at any moment the administration is going to discover something awfully wrong with his department, and it will become one of those news stories like when a funeral home gets caught passing off kitty litter for human remains.

He’s quiet at tonight’s meeting, too. After the meeting closes with the circle joining hands and reciting The Lord’s Prayer, Will asks Ben to stick around. While Junior, a liver-spotted septuagenarian and the group’s most senior member, and Dot, a petite twenty-something with dark bangs that reach the black frames of her glasses (the whole effect is that she’s not ready to bare herself to the group), clear away the coffee and cookies, Will and Ben take seats in a corner. Given everything Ben was dealing with when he started AA – he was starting Lexapro for his anxiety, and Kristin was going through a nightmarish detox – Ben wanted the best sponsor he could find, and no one seemed wiser or had more years of sobriety – twelve – than Will B. Will’s a youthful forty-four; thin but broad-shouldered, with deep hairlines but thick, richly-colored hair, and a clear face. He learned to take care of himself after his wife left him four years ago. She’d stuck with him through six years of alcoholism; but after eight years of sobriety she realized their problems ran far deeper than his addiction.

When Ben approached Will about sponsoring him, Will said he’d be happy to, but he wanted Ben to know some things about him so he’d be fully-informed about his choice.

“I’m sure you know my wife left me,” Will had said.

“I know. How’s your son, by the way?”

“He’s a mess. But he’s sixteen, so that’s par for the course. Anyway, we’ve never actually gotten a divorce.”

“I didn’t know that. I just assumed you had.”

“At first, I begged her not to do it. I said that maybe living apart she’d realize she didn’t want to do it, and we’d get back together. Now – and I guess you know this, too – I’ve got Celia.”

“Look, Will, I’m on board with all this. Your wife left you, and you’re dating. That’s fine.”

“Celia was a client.”

Ben considered this. “I guess that’s a no-no.”

Will nodded yes. “Before that, she and her husband were clients.”

“She leave him for you?”

“No. He was killed in Afghanistan.”

“You mean you started with this girl after –”

“She’s not a girl. And her husband was no kid. She’s thirty-one. Her husband was a Major. I comforted her. That’s how it started.”

“I can see why you want me to know.”

“Yeah,” Will laughed. “I know what it looks like: that I’m preying on this widow. But it’s real, believe me.”

“I’m still in,” Ben said. “You know how to stay sober. That’s all that matters.”

“So you want to tell me what’s going on?” Will asks. “Kathy T. says she saw the police pull up to your house the other night. You miss the meeting and now you show up with this cut on your face. What’s happening, Buddy?”

Kathy T. Fucking busybody. But he ought to tell his sponsor about it. He laces his fingers together and stares at them. “I got into a fight with this asshole -”

“A fight? You’re a grown man. What are doing getting into a fight?”

“And then this cop accused me of threatening to hit him with a broom. Which was a fucking lie.”

“Good Lord, Buddy,” Will says, placing a hand on Ben’s and giving a light squeeze. “You’ve got to work on your anger. Look at me.”

Ben looks up. He’s always hated the feeling of being in trouble, whether it was with Mom or Pop or his teachers (though he minded that a lot less), but with Will it’s okay. Things are always better after he’s admitted them to Will.

“Don’t you think now would be a good time for you to step down as Chair?”

Ben’s pulls his hands from under Will’s and opens them, begging. “Because of this thing? I promise I’ll work on my anger – nothing like this will happen again.”

Will raises his brows, as if Ben has struck on something he hadn’t thought of. “No,” he says, “I wasn’t thinking you ought to step down because of what happened the other night. Though that could become a problem, if Kathy T. doesn’t keep her mouth shut. I was only thinking that you’ve been Chair just about six months. That’s about as long as anyone is Chair before moving on.”

Ben looks back at his hands. The short, white ridges of several scars stretch across the knuckles of his right hand, from when he put it through a mirror three years ago.

“Something you want to say?” Will says.

“It’s just…. You know I’ve never had much confidence. Being Chair is something I actually have confidence in.”

“What about at your job? How is the garbage business, anyway?”

“I keep feeling like they’re going to discover I’m a fraud.”

“You’re not a fraud.”

“Being Chair is the thing I’m best at,” Ben says, rubbing his scars as if he can erase them. “I don’t want to give it up.”

“It’s not like you’re giving it up forever. I’ve been Chair three times over the years.” Will stands, puts a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “But you shouldn’t be so concerned with it. It’s not about you. Principles before personalities, Buddy.”

“I know.”

“Let’s get together soon, and talk about this anger business.”

Saturday morning, Kristin is sitting in a chair on the back patio and flipping through Pregnancy magazine when Ben comes out the sliding door. In spite of the brisk air, when the sunlight makes him flinch he feels like taking a nap rather than helping Will. He falls into the chair next to Kristin. Kristin sets down her magazine and asks if Will isn’t abusing the sponsor-sponsee relationship by asking Ben to help him fix his deck.

“I think he wants more than a hand with the deck. He wants to talk. He wants me to step down as group Chair.”

“Then step down.”

“It’s hard. When are you ever going to take a leadership role in your group?”

Kristin rolls up her magazine and whacks Ben across the shoulder. “I kind of have something else going on right now, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“Well, hurry up and squeeze that thing out.” Ben stands and says, “I’m off,” and walks to the garage for his bike.

Will’s house is in a neighborhood like Ben’s, houses built in the post-war boom on small lots, back yards separated by chain-link fences with dogs yapping across them, but closer to Trinity’s arts building. Ben parks his bike next to Will’s brick one-and-a-half story, and heads around back, where he expects to find him already at work. A metal tool box is on the wrought-iron table in the center of the square deck, whose white paint is peeling and spindles are warped. A few spindles have been knocked out and lie in the grass by garden beds overtaken by leaves. The one-car garage is in need of paint too, and the edges of its roof are rotting. Ben turns to the door to knock, but voices on the other side stop him.

“I don’t see why you refuse to go even once.” Celia. She moved in last spring.

“Do I really have to explain?” Will pleads.

“Yes.”

“They’ll want my head. You’re a beautiful young woman who lost her husband in combat, and I’m a middle-aged recovering alcoholic. People see that, and all they’ll see is a ruthless predator. I can’t take that – I’ll start to believe them.”

Ben wonders if there’s pity or exasperation on Celia’s face.

“Let me see if I understand,” Celia says, “You won’t go to my support group, but you can use my money to fix up your house?”

“That’s what the money’s for,” Will says.

Celia yells back, “For refinishing your floors? For buying you a new TV?”

“You live here, too,” Will yells. “The money was given to you so you could live well, and this is where you live, now.”

“The money was given to me because my husband gave his life for people like you.”

There’s a moment of silence in which Ben wants to get on his bike and race home. Then Will comes out the door.

“How long have you been out here?”

“I just walked up.”

“Don’t lie,” Will says evenly.

The men loosen rotted boards and replace them with fresh ones that Will cuts on a table saw in the garage. When the deck is properly patched, they’ll scrap off the old paint and refinish it with a wood stain. That will have to wait for another weekend.

While they’re setting a board in place, Ben says, “You wanted to talk about my anger?”

Will gives him a wry smile. “I think we’ll save that for another time.”

Tuesday morning, one of Ben’s staff members is a no-show, and he has to put another one back on the bus because she’s stoned. It’s not the best start to Ben and Kristin’s three-year anniversary of sobriety. When he should be reading about new procedures for biohazard disposal, he’s all over the medical campus sanitizing the rooms his shrunken staff can’t get to, tucking his tie into his shirt as he wipes down the sinks and toilets, and getting impatient looks from the nurses waiting on the rooms. Then he’s back in his office in the basement returning calls to his supervisors and assuring them that everything is under control. He craves a cigarette, which is better than craving a drink, but he doesn’t want to start smoking again, either. When he finishes his last call he slumps in his chair and takes a deep breath. Half-joking, he leans back and begins delivering the Serenity Prayer to the drop ceiling, but the goddamned phone rings again before he can ask for the courage to change the things he can.

“Environmental Services.”

“I need you, Buddy.” It’s Will, though he can’t tell from the shaky voice, only the way the he’s been called ‘Buddy.’ “Celia’s gone.”

“What do you mean, ‘gone?’”

“She left. Moved to her parents. She wouldn’t answer her cell, so I called her office and they said she’d taken a personal day, so I went home and she’d left a note.”

“What did it say?”

“What do you think it said? I can’t go back to the office. I told the secretary to cancel everything. I feel sick. I thought we we’re going to get married.”

“You are married.” Christ, why does he keep saying the wrong thing? “I’m sorry. Do you think she might come back?”

“I don’t know. The note says she thinks it’s for the best if she moves out. We talked about having a child. We thought there was still time.”

“I’ll come over tonight, and we’ll talk, okay?”

“I don’t know if I’ll make it till then. I haven’t felt like this since things were falling apart with the wife. That period really tried me – I was closer to a relapse than ever during all that. St. Matthew’s Liquor is only a few blocks away, Buddy. I’m afraid that if you don’t get over here, I might find myself taking a trip up there.”

Ben rides over to Will’s, pumping the pedals as hard as he can, his tie whipping over his shoulder. Will’s Camry is in the drive, so he’s not browsing the aisles of St. Matthews Liquor. Surely he couldn’t have left and come back already? Ben goes to the front door and bangs his hands on the storm glass. Will, stripped of his blazer and tie, his shirt coming out of his pants as if he’s been scratching himself, comes to the door and calmly lets Ben inside.

“Thanks for coming over, Buddy.”

His face has lost its clearness; it looks like it’s covered in chalk dust. They sit at the dining room table, where a Monopoly game with money and properties tucked under three sides is on hold. Someone has hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place.

“Looks like we won’t be finishing this one,” Will says. “I think the kid had us beat, anyway.”

At first, the men don’t talk about Celia, but there are shades of her in the conversation. Will says he’ll have to put some of his home improvement projects on hold. He’d hoped to sell the place and buy something bigger, but there’s no sense in getting a bigger place, now. Then Celia is fully present: Will says he was almost always the first one home in the afternoon, and that he savored that half-hour or so before she arrived; he’d scoot a chair in front of the living room TV and play Gran Turismo on the old Playstation his son kept there. He might even have a glass a milk and some ginger snaps. But he was happy to finish racing and clean up his snack when Celia pulled in. Now, he was afraid of that precious half-hour stretching and swallowing his whole evening because Celia wasn’t coming home, and that the childish pleasures of cookies and TV games would demand to be followed by more adult pursuits, and he’d end up drinking. Ben, falling into his role as Chair, reminds him he’ll have to take things one day at a time.

“I know. I don’t think I should be your sponsor while I’m going through this.”

“That’s no problem. Do you want me to be your sponsor?”

Will laughs and some of the color returns to his face. “Thanks, but no thanks, Buddy. I like my sponsors to stay out of jail,” he says, tapping the JAIL square on the Monopoly board. “Don’t worry, we’ll both find someone.”

The men sit quietly for a moment. Ben’s stomach is starting to ache with hunger, but he doesn’t want to bother Will for anything to eat. Will rolls the Monopoly race car across his palm, and then studies the board trying to remember from what square he picked it up, as if the game will be finished later. He gives up and tosses it into the bank where it lands among the unused houses and hotels with a plastic crash. Will shakes his head, as if from a daydream. “Have you given any more thought to stepping down as group Chair?”

Ben has thought about it daily, and his thoughts are always the same: He doesn’t want to give it up, not yet. It’s the part of his life into which he puts all his extra energy. Since becoming sober, his marriage has coasted along peaceably, and for that he’s thankful. He lets Kristin take the lead in most matters, so he’s freed up there. And while not every day at St. Monica’s delivers the kind of mess he had to fix this morning, they all leave Ben feeling like he’s barely holding his department together; there’s no getting ahead or any more in control of things, so in a way he’s freed up there, too. He’s put all that energy into his group and the roles he’s taken: Literature Representative, Secretary, and now Chair. But instead of explaining this to Will, he says, “No, not really.”

“You mean you haven’t even considered it?”

“I know what you’re going to say: Principles before personalities.”

“No,” Will says, “I already said that. I was just thinking that something very demanding is about to come up in your life.”

Ben isn’t sure where Will’s going with this. He wishes he would just say whatever he’s got to say. He seems to have calmed down and hasn’t expressed any desire to drink, so Ben thinks he should get back to the hospital. Will’s still looking at him expectantly when his cell buzzes in his pocket. It’s Kristin.

“I’m in labor!” she says.

Her miniature voice fills the dining room. Will gets jogs to the kitchen.

“You mean now?” Ben asks.

“Yes, now!”

“But you’re not due till next week.”

“I don’t think the baby cares! Where are you?”

“Will’s. He’s got something going on, I’ll tell you later.”

“I’ve got something going on, too! Now get back to the hospital!”

Ben clicks the phone shut and tells Will he’s got to go. Will returns to the dining room with his blazer on and his keys in his hand. “You’re not riding that bike back – it’ll take too long. I’m driving you.”

There is a lot to fear in his life when Ben looks at it all at once, like he does in the rushed walk he and his once-sponsor, Will B., are making in the halls of St. Monica’s, and in the elevators those fears crowd closer. His court date is coming up; Pop figures he’ll get probation at worst and a fine at best, though that will be tough on him and Kristin, too. He’s decided to step down from being group Chair; with a baby, it’ll be hard enough just to make it to meetings. But when he reminds himself to take things one day at a time, the way he keeps the lid on the boiling pot that is his department, he knows he can stay sober and do the best he can for his family. His family. He wonders what that will look like. They don’t know what they’re having.

The men finally arrive at the Mother/Baby Unit and Ben asks for Kristin Easy. “Is everything okay?”

“She’s doing fine,” a nurse says. “Will this gentleman be coming with you?” she asks.

“No, thank you,” Will says, raising his palms. “Once was enough for me. Good luck, Buddy.”

“It’s just me, then.”

“Come this way, Mr. Easy.”

Patrick Nevins is an Assistant Professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College. His fiction appears in Freight Stories and Gander Press Review.