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“Are you ready to leave us?”
She heard Dr. Moody’s kind voice and Dorothy turned.
Dr. Moody stood in the doorway. In her high-waisted, straight-legged jeans and ethnic-embroidered tunic top, she looked like exactly who she was—a woman who gave all her time and energy to helping others. Dorothy wished she had money to give to this woman who had saved her.
“I think I’m ready, but I don’t feel like I am. What if—”
“One day at a time,” Dr. Moody said.
It should have screamed cliché, like the words of the Serenity Prayer. Both had once made her roll her eyes. Now she knew that some things could be cliché and true at the same time.
“One day at a time,” Dorothy said, nodding. She could do it that way, she hoped. Break her life into bite-sized pieces.
Dr. Moody held out a small envelope. “This is for you. ”
Dorothy took it, stared down at the picture of bright red cherry tomatoes on it. “Tomato seeds. ”
“For your organic garden. ”
Dorothy looked up. In the past weeks, this “plan” had come to her. She’d studied it, imagined it, dreamed it. But could she do it? Could she really move back into her parents’ old investment property on Firefly Lane and rip up the overgrown rhododendrons and junipers and till the small plat of land and grow things?
She’d never successfully cared for anything in her life. She’d never succeeded, period. Not at anything. Panic began its slow, popping bubbling up inside of her.
“I’ll come out on Friday,” Dr. Moody said. “I’ll bring my boys. We’ll help you start clearing. ”
“Really?”
“You can do this, Dorothy. You’re stronger than you think. ”
No. I’m not. But what choice did she have? She couldn’t go back again.
“Will you contact your daughter?”
Dorothy released a heavy sigh. A parade of memories sidled into the room. All the times “Cloud” had abandoned Tully. She could change her name back to Dorothy, but Cloud was still a part of her, and she had broken her daughter’s heart more times than she could count. “Not yet. ”
“When?”
“When I believe. ”
“In what?”
Dorothy looked at her counselor and saw the sadness in her dark eyes. It was understandable. Dr. Moody wanted to cure Dorothy; that was her goal. In pursuit of that cure, the doctor had put Dorothy through detox, talked her through the worst of her withdrawal, and convinced her to go on medication for mood swings. All of it had helped.
But it wasn’t a cure for the past. There was no pill that offered redemption. All Dorothy could do was change and atone and hope that someday she would be strong enough to face her daughter and apologize. “In me,” she said at last, and Dr. Moody nodded. It was a good answer. Something they talked about in group all the time. Believing in yourself was important—and hard for people who’d perfected the art of disappointing their friends and family. Truthfully, Dorothy said the words and tried to sound sincere, but she didn’t believe in the possibility of redemption. Not for her.
* * *
One day at a time, one breath at a time, one moment at a time. That was how Dorothy learned to live this new life of hers. She didn’t lose her craving for drugs and alcohol and the forgetfulness they offered, nor did she forget the bad things she’d done or the hearts she’d broken. In fact, she made a point of remembering them. She became evangelical about her change. She reveled in her pain, swam in the icy waters of clarity.
She started slowly, and did things in order. She wrote to her daughter’s business manager and told him she was moving into her parents’ old rental house on Firefly Lane. It had been vacant for years, so she saw no reason not to claim it. As soon as she’d mailed the letter, she felt a slim thread of hope. Each day when she went to the mailbox she thought: She’ll answer. But in January of 2006, the first year of her sober life, she heard a businesslike, I’ll forward your monthly allowance to Seventeen Firefly Lane, from the manager and not a word from her daughter.
Of course.
Her days that first winter were a confusing mix of despair, discipline, and exhaustion. She pushed herself harder than she’d ever pushed herself before. She rose at dawn and worked in the big, flat field until nightfall, when she fell into bed so tired she sometimes forgot to brush her teeth. She ate breakfast (a banana and an organic muffin) and lunch (a turkey sandwich and an apple) in the field every day, sitting cross-legged in the tilled black earth that smelled like fecund possibility. In the evenings she rode her bike into town and attended meetings. Hi, I’m Dorothy and I’m an addict. Hi, Dorothy!
As odd as it sounded, the roteness of it soothed and comforted her. The strangers who stood around after the meeting, drinking bad coffee in Styrofoam cups and eating stale store-bought cookies, became friends. She’d met Myron there, and through Myron, Peggy, and through Peggy, Edgar and Owen and the organic farming community.
By June of 2006, she had cleared a quarter of an acre and rototilled a small patch of earth. She bought rabbits and built them a hutch and learned to mix their droppings with dying leaves and what little food leftovers she had into compost. She stopped chewing on her fingernails and traded her obsession for marijuana and alcohol into one for organic fruits and vegetables. She had sworn off much of the world, thinking that a life without modern choices would suit her newfound self-discipline best.
