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What would have happened if Cloud had said, It’s perfect. I love it. I love you, all those years ago?
She felt a fresh surge of pain. Pocketing the barely-there necklace, she dressed quickly and then glanced back at her daughter.
She limped closer and began to reach out, but when she saw her hand, pale and veiny and knobby and shaking—a witch’s hand—she drew it back without even touching her daughter’s sleeve.
She had no right to touch this woman, no right to yearn for what had never been, no right even to regret.
At that, she thought: I need a drink. She glanced at her daughter one last time and then opened the door. Moving cautiously down one hallway and then another, she made her way to an exit.
Outside, the darkness of Seattle swallowed her, and once again she was invisible.
* * *
Reaching into her pocket, Cloud found the wadded-up sixty dollars she’d taken from Truc.
He’d be waking up soon, growling like a bear, stretching his arms, calling for her to bring him coffee.
She pushed the thought away and kept walking. Limping. It was dawn now. Breaks of pale gray light fell falteringly between the buildings on either side of her. When rain began to fall, spittingly, then angrily, she climbed up onto the stoop of a vacant-looking building and sat down, pulling her feet in close to her body.
Her headache was getting worse. So was the shaking in her hands. But the bars weren’t open yet and neither were the liquor stores.
Across the street, dawn lit the sky behind a row of old brick buildings. Sagging sheets hung in broken windows. Beside her, a scrawny-looking cat prowled between stinking, overfull garbage cans. Rain studded bits of paper and trash to the sidewalk.
How many times in her life had she slept in a place just like this? And this was a better choice than others she’d made. Men like Truc. In the dark, they were all the same, the men she’d chosen in her life, and those who had been chosen for her. Fists and booze and anger.
She dug through her gritty pocket for the money she’d taken from Truc’s wallet. Maybe, if she let it go, just dropped it into the rain, it would be an untangling of some kind, a do-over.
But what she pulled out was a business card with a dog-eared edge.
Dr. Karen Moody [funny name for a shrink]
Occidental Rehab
Written across the bottom was: When you’re ready to make a change.
Cloud had heard these words a thousand times in her life from doctors and social workers. Even from her daughter. People pretended all the time that they could help, that they wanted to.
Cloud had never trusted them, not even back when she was Dorothy and young enough to believe in the kindness of strangers. She had thrown away dozens of cards and flyers and pamphlets like this over the years.
But now, this time, as she sat on the garbage-stinking stoop, with rain nipping at her heels, the word—change—filled her with longing. She glimpsed the pit of her own loneliness, saw how deep it ran, how dark it was.
Occidental.
The street was less than a block away. Was it a sign?
There had been a time when she lived her life believing in signs. The est and Unitarian years. She’d thrown herself into one belief system after another. The jumps into faith had always been followed by depression, moods so dark and low she could only belly-crawl her way out. Each time she had failed, and each failure had taken something from her.
The one god she’d never turned to was herself. Rehab. Sobriety. One day at a time. These words and phrases had always terrified her. What if she really tried to be better—saner—and she failed at that? Would there be enough of her left to save?
And yet here she was. Sixty-some years old, the girlfriend of a mean drunk, a punching bag, essentially homeless, unemployed, a drunk and a pothead. A mother and not a mother.
There already wasn’t enough of her to save. This was the rock bottom she’d feared all of her life. She was beaten and down. The only way she could stand was if someone helped her up.
She was so tired of this life … exhausted.
It was that, the exhaustion, that did it.
She grabbed hold of the wobbly handrail and hauled herself to a shaking, unsteady stand. Gritting her teeth, she limped out into the rain and kept going.
