Ours is Not a Caravan of Despair
Maybe he could be allowed back in the human race — maybe he belonged there after all.
Robert was in the truck again, driving to another little town looking for Smith, as he’d done almost every night since he and Cynthia found the things in Maylin’s room. Despite the horror and certainty that Smith had planned to get to their little girl almost from the start, Robert was losing his appetite for revenge. He was worn out by the hunt for Smith and by not knowing what would happen if he found him.
To reignite his rage, he called up the memory of the notecards Smith sent to Maylin, his handwriting, the words he used, the pictures he took. Going further back, Robert called up the early days of his sobriety when Smith was his sponsor and he began to doubt that he was a good guy. And later, how he discovered Smith’s connections to Jessica and to his wife’s best friend.
But he also recalled his own connection to the two women. His shame and fear. That horrible day at Jessica’s and how Maylin was never the same afterward.
Now she was gone forever.
Robert shuddered and twitched. He gripped the steering wheel and overcorrected, sending the tires onto the gravel edge of Rt. 11 leading into the village of Tully. A speed limit sign warned him to slow to 30 m.p.h. and he obeyed, looking for the turn.
This meeting was new to him, and he was surprised to see the church was new, also — a wood-clad contemporary with a spacious paved parking lot. Only a dozen cars and no smokers hanging out by the door. Signs of a small, civilized group.
A banner hung above the meeting hall doors in the vestibule: “Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times. Come, come again, come.”
In the meeting room, folding chairs faced a podium, and two dozen people, mostly white, in their 40s and older, stood or sat talking quietly. Faces turned to look at him curiously, and Robert headed for the coffee set-up where a tall, thin man held out his right hand.
“Welcome. I’m Jim.”
Robert shook Jim’s hand. “Robert. Visiting from Ithaca.” The white lie was automatic, a technicality.
“Ah. Road trip.” Jim turned to a younger man at his side. “Wesley, this is Robert.”
Wesley gave Robert a quick nod and looked aside.
Newcomer, Robert thought. He offered his hand gravely and Wesley shook it. The greeting and handshaking were familiar AA rituals that held the planet on its axis. They also hid Robert’s true mission: to find Smith. On the table beside the coffee urn was a homemade cake with chocolate frosting, “Congratulations” spelled out in red icing.” This was an anniversary meeting. He took a cookie from a plate, turned, and scanned the room.
Smith was not there, but someone else was. Jessica.
Ice coursed through Robert’s arms, legs, and core. He stopped breathing and the half-chewed cookie turned to sand in his mouth.
She sat on the far side of the room between a man and a younger woman with dark hair. Jessica looked much the same, only less angular, with shoulder-length hair loose around her face, spilling onto a green sweater. She leaned a little forward, knees pressed together and poking through rips in black faded jeans. Her mouth moved but he was too far away to hear her voice. The man next to her wore a stained logo cap that read “Lilly’s Tack and Feed,” and a faded Carhartt jacket. The younger woman’s pale face shone above a leather jacket and black jeans.
The man in the Carhartt jacket noticed him staring, and Robert quickly looked away. There was no place to run or hide without attracting attention. He choked on the cookie, coughing loudly.
“You OK there?” Jim asked, smiling.
Robert nodded. He wasn’t.
Fuck.
He turned his back to the room and fumbled over instant coffee, scooping the brown crystals into a styrofoam cup and tapping hot water from the urn, his mind racing.
Maybe she hadn’t seen him. Jim, Wesley, and the unknown-knowns around him talked and laughed, complained, exchanged greetings. Robert struggled to clear his throat and took a few steps to his right toward an open door leading into a small kitchen. No exit. A dead end.
“Hello, Robert.”
Too late. Her voice was the same, slightly mocking. Adrenaline rushed through him, but he turned slowly, trying to swallow the cookie dust and arrange his face into an expression of surprise. He couldn’t think what to say. There was a tiny scar on her nostril where the ring used to be, and he focused on her shoulder, remembering how her braids had felt in his grip. Desperately, he pushed the thought away.
“It’s been a long time,” she said. “You know who I am, right?
“Yes, hello,” he croaked.
“What brings you here? Road trip?”
Was that a thing here in Tully, a thing they asked visitors?
She glanced over her shoulder. “You’re alone?”
“Yeah, yes.”
She took a deep breath. “Well, listen. I’m sorry for any harm I may have caused to you or Cynthia due to my behavior in the past.”
Now a wave of heat burned him from the inside, rose up his neck and out the top of his head.
“It’s my fault,” he said and realized it was true. “I was wrong.” He paused. “But I don’t know what really happened.”
Jessica took a step back. “What do you mean you don’t know what happened?”
“I mean, upstairs at your house. The girls, and the dog.” This was coming out wrong.
“I don’t understand. Nothing happened.” She shook her head.
“Was Smith there?”
“Smith?” She shook her head again and frowned. “That has nothing to do. . . I don’t — I just wanted to, to make amends.”
“OK,” he said.
“OK?”
“OK,” he repeated. Sorry. I was fucked up. I’m still fucked up.
She hesitated, and he was suddenly afraid of what she might say next. Please don’t say it.
“How’s Maylin?”
Here was the question he could not answer. He did not know the answer when Maylin was alive, and he did not know it now.
The gavel banged. Jessica and Robert stood perfectly still as the others moved to the chairs and voices dwindled.
“She’s gone,” he said.
But Jessica did not hear. She looked over her shoulder again at her companions. Robert looked, too, and guessed the young woman must be Jessica’s girl, grown-up, the same age as Maylin. She looked at him exactly the way she had all those years before — her face closed like a book. Jessica made a gesture in their direction as if to excuse herself and walked back to her seat.
Robert felt oddly stretched and dizzy as though he might float up to the ceiling.
Enough, he thought angrily. I’m done with this.
He set down his coffee cup and headed for the exit, out to his truck in the twilight.
The key was in the ignition and he almost turned it. Instead, he thought: What am I doing? He leaned back in the seat, in the quiet. Then he went back inside.
They were finishing the readings. Jim was still there, smiled and nodded at him, probably happy Robert had obeyed AA’s exhortation to “keep coming back.”
He felt foolish — that was nothing new. But he was calm, and that was new. He wanted to see it through, whatever this was. He sat in a chair near the door, far from Jessica, the man, and her daughter. He didn’t look at them.
“Welcome to our monthly open meeting celebrating AA birthdays,” the chairperson said. “We have some anniversaries tonight and Jim is going to hand out the coins. We say welcome to family and friends with us today and remind you that what you hear here, who you see here, let it stay here.”
“Hear, hear,” came the response from the AA members.
Robert let himself enter the familiar ritual, to participate in the serenity prayer, the applause, and genuine happiness of people celebrating AA birthdays. He looked closely at the men and women who stood up to accept metal coins embossed with roman numerals and the triangle of unity, service, and recovery. Some were bashful, others wore big smiles, some were triumphant.
Robert marveled. He felt the awe of getting any sober time at all, much less racking up years or decades. This was real, this really could happen to broken people. He could not resist smiling with them, for them, and gratitude swelled in his chest at the testimonials, even the talk about God and higher power; courage, surrender, fellowship.
A handful of short-timers had a year or two, and one fellow old-timer like himself, a gray-haired woman in a wheelchair, had 38 years. Jim leaned down to hug her and handed her the coin. Unreasonably, he hoped this woman would answer his doubts, his questions. Was she still conflicted, perhaps deeply? Did she have dark secrets like him? Or did she have the keys to the serenity and peace that he longed for but believed he did not deserve? Had she received and offered forgiveness, kept solemn vows, and truly made amends?
Her voice was weak and he cupped his ear to hear better.
“Thank you for helping me stay sober, friends,” she said. “The fellowship and the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous help me stay sober one day at a time. I ask for help from a higher power, and it comes, eventually.” There was light laughter at that, and she paused to let it fade.
“To anyone new or struggling, we say don’t drink and go to meetings. There were times I did not think I could survive without a drink — my daughter’s death and when I lost my health. But I did survive and I did not drink. I learned to let time take time, one day at a time. Doing our best is the best we can do. That’s it.”
That’s it, Robert thought. Doing your best is the best you can do. He didn’t believe it was that simple or that any single slogan or person could provide all the answers. He itched for a bigger, better solution than this. But he shook his head and something seemed to fly out his arms and fingers as he clapped with the others.
While the meeting continued, he turned inward and saw the geometry of his sobriety, his meditation of the empty cardboard model floating in space. But this time, something new happened. The walls unhinged and dropped away until there was only uncontained light.
The meeting ended, people stood, and Robert held the hands of the strangers to his left and right as they recited the prayer together. He walked outside, pausing to stretch under the indigo sky. The dark hills seemed to hold the parking lot and cars in a bowl. The old woman was wheeled out and helped into a waiting car.
“Robert!”
It was Jessica calling after him. “I want you to meet my family.” She motioned to the man and the young woman until the four of them stood together. Robert braced for panic but he felt curious, too.
“This is Grant.” The man shook Robert’s hand without a hint of caution or resistance. “And this is my daughter, Stephanie.”
“Yes,” Robert said. The girl with no name from that day in 1998. He wouldn’t have known her if Jessica didn’t introduce them. Stephanie nodded and looked down.
Jessica said to her, “Do you remember Robert’s daughter, Maylin?”
Stephanie didn’t answer.
“How is she?” Jessica asked Robert.
Everything froze for a beat. No sound, no movement. Here was the question he could not answer. He did not know the answer when Maylin was alive, and he did not know it now.
“She passed away in August,” he said.
A car engine started and someone nearby laughed. Jessica covered her mouth with one hand and reached for his arm with the other.
“No,” she breathed.
“So sorry to hear that,” Grant said quietly.
Jessica took Robert’s hand in both of hers, squeezed. He let her do it, realizing he wanted it, just like this.
“I am so very sorry,” she said. “You and Cynthia are in our prayers.”
Robert swallowed hard. “It was an accident. Sudden.”
Jessica and Grant nodded. The darkening sky stretched overhead. People moved past them, got in their cars. In a moment, they would be the only ones in the parking lot.
“It was good to see you,” he said, taking a step backward.
“Take care, Robert,” Jessica said.
In the truck, he wept, overcome by the simple kindness, the humanity of that brief interaction, and at his sorrow. He accepted them; he didn’t have the energy to fight. Speaking with Jessica that way made the past almost irrelevant. The old fear and guilt were not the point. Maybe he could be allowed back in the human race, belonged there after all, for all that he was busted and barely coping, grieving his swept-away daughter. Robert in the real here and now, in this moment. If he hadn’t gone back inside, it would never have happened.
On the way home, he yearned for Cynthia and to share this with her. He was done with Smith. It was not until hours later that he thought about Stephanie, Jessica’s girl, and what the news of Maylin’s death might, or might not, mean to her.
