Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

“How did you … how do you get there? Where you are?”

The question was so raw, so plaintive, that Evan took a moment to find a worthy answer. He looked down, studied the tips of his boots. “I was so goddamned scared of Van Sciver. He was so much … so much bigger than I was. So I covered it. And I covered it. Afraid you guys would see.”

“See what?”

“Shame. At how afraid I was. How powerless. I had to prove I wasn’t a coward. So I did. I faked it again and again. Until at some point I believed myself.”

Andre made a thoughtful voice deep in his throat. “Maybe that’s all bravery is.”

“Maybe,” Evan said. “And bravery comes in different guises.”

“Like what?”

“Like standing up now, taking a shower, and getting to a meeting.”

Andre blinked a few times quickly and shuddered off a chill. Then he rolled his head back on his neck and blew a breath at the ceiling that signaled not defeat but a different kind of giving up.

He rose.

The large church basement, toasty from an overzealous heating system, felt warm and cozy. High-set hopper windows, fogging up with a kind of holiday cheer, vibrated with the buzz of trapped flies. Cookies and coffee and a boxed cake on a table in the back. The scent of cigarettes rising from the clothes of the participants, who sat in folding chairs arrayed around a podium. A poster on the wall proclaimed DON’T PICK A FIGHT WITH REALITY, an aphorism Evan figured could make a good addition to the Commandments.

He’d driven a surveillance-detection route through the surrounding blocks before approaching the All Saints Catholic Church via an alley. He’d eased Andre to the meeting step by cautious step. The basement had stairs at both ends, providing good options for egress.

A woman in a pantsuit finished her story and said, “Would anyone else like to share?”

Andre stirred in his chair beside Evan and reluctantly rose.

He took the podium. “My name is Andre Duran, and I’m a alcoholic.”

A chorus of gentle voices. “Hi, Andre.”

“I’m about four hours sober,” he said. “So I got that shit going for me.”

A few chuckles. Evan looked around at the others, some of whom had shown themselves intimately over the past forty-five minutes. So much vulnerability, so little negative judgment, everyone in it together, all telling their own unique stories. Or he’d thought of them as unique, at least the first four or five, but as he’d sat here and watched person after person bare their soul, he realized that this very process of truth and sharing was the thing that made their stories not so horribly unique. Their courage bound them and allowed them to shuffle together into the light of whatever tomorrow might hold.

The flies beat themselves against the high windows, an oddly pleasing hum.

“I been under a lot of pressure,” Andre said. “And I caved. Because, hey, what’s better when you already got a ton of problems than adding a buncha self-inflicted ones, too?”

A lot of nods. Evan saw the wreckage in the faces around him. And some deep-seated wisdom as well.

“My first meeting, my sponsor told me, ‘If God seems far away, who moved?’” Andre laughed. “I been crawlin’ away for a long time. From my God, from my—” His voice caught. He pressed together his lips until they stopped trembling. “From my daughter.”

He looked down at the podium as if there were notes he could refer to. “I remember two years back around this time. Sofia was … she was nine. I was strugglin’ real bad. Paycheck going to the liquor store. Head in the bottle. All the other families around had their Christmas lights and decorations and all that shit that takes time and … I don’t know, care , I guess. And there’s this awful feeling at the back of your head that you’re no longer just fuckin’ up your own life but someone else’s, someone too young to even make the choice or know what they’re missing out on, but they are, and you know it, and that’s a whole other kind of loneliness, and you can’t help but have the sense that someone’s watching you, not God really, but some other something, and that thing is never gonna forgive you even if she does. You’re breakin’ apart, but you try’na hold it together for the gifts, two Barbie dolls and a sweater three sizes too big, and my girl grateful for it, loving the toys that I stopped by Goodwill for the night before, that I wrapped with too much tape in leftover wrapping paper with cake and candles, and the kid is so grateful for the badly wrapped fucking Barbies you could just hate her for not knowin’ she deserves better. But you don’t. You hate you . And you see it in her eyes, how much you … you know, you’re just failing . At being a adult.”

Andre breathed wetly for a time.

“And instead of fighting that failure, insteada making it better, you give in to it.” He caught himself. “ I did. I gave in to it. I wallowed. I told myself all my pain entitled me to something. A break, right? Just a fucking break. And I haven’t seen my baby in one year, five months, and sixteen days. And I don’t know if I’m gonna have the chance to again.”

He sobbed into the L of his thumb and forefinger for a time, and everyone let him.

They just let him.

Evan looked around in disbelief. All that patience and acceptance and quiet support on display, and Evan squirming in the face of it.

He forced himself to sit still in what he was feeling. To mirror the people around him with their prematurely lined faces, their breath heavy with coffee, clothes reeking of old cigarette smoke. He tried to see what they knew, what they’d learned.

The First Commandment: Assume nothing .

Including that Evan knew a damn thing about anything.

Andre saw in Evan all kinds of bravery. But sitting here in his folding chair, Evan saw only his deficits. To talk about his deepest shame and failings here in this arena was unthinkable. He’d imagined himself as a guiding light to Andre, drawing him toward some kind of wholeness. But he realized now that Andre had just as much to teach him, if he were only willing to pay attention.

And then Andre picked up his head. “But I’m gonna try ’n’ do better. For myself and for her. I’m gonna try ’n’ find grace again. Thank you.”

Everyone clapped for him, and he nodded a few times and then caught Evan’s eye, his playful smile suddenly, alarmingly familiar. “I want to invite my friend Evan up to share.”

Dozens of sets of eyes lasered to Evan.

He felt all his goodwill toward Andre dissipate. In the windows the flies buzzed and buzzed. The scent of scorched coffee wafted from the rear table.

“No thanks,” Evan said. “I’m good.”

“Hey, man,” Andre said, now warming to a prankster’s grin that Evan was simultaneously glad for and enraged by. “Denial is the first stage.”

All the gazes around him were warm, accepting, which somehow made Evan feel even more exposed. The perceived threat made his training kick in, his senses revving to high. The cold metal of the chair beneath him. The dry warmth of the air. The symphony of the trapped flies.

One of the auditory notes had a vaguely jangling element to it, the faintest clink of metal against glass. Time slowed down, Andre and the others fading from consideration. Evan turned his head, looking over his shoulder at the hopper window to the side.

A fly at the window caught the ambient light from a passing car, giving off a metallic glint.

Evan’s chair screeched on the tile; he’d risen abruptly.

He checked the front and back stairwells—doors still closed.

Quick strides to the window, plucking a saddlebag purse from the chair beside the pantsuited woman, everyone watching him in puzzlement. He rose on tiptoes and slammed the purse to the glass. A few flies buzzed free, but several fell against the sill.