I stayed at the Shipleys’ only a few more days. A doctor gave me permission to start using my arm and a more versatile cast, so I asked Griff to drop me off at home again.
“You sure, man? You can stay longer. You’re not in the way.”
That was bullshit, of course. “It will be good to get back in the garage,” I told him. And that was almost true. As usual, I needed to keep my hands busy. But this time I needed the busy work to prevent me from thinking about Sophie.
Just getting through the day was a lot of effort. With a bum arm and a sore body, it took me four times as long to do things like eat breakfast or take a shower. I did some hours in the garage, basically keeping the lights on so that people would still come to us with their problem dents and their dings.
Strangely enough my father rose to the occasion. His MO had always been to put in the bare minimum of effort. But with my right arm in a cast, the bare minimum was a little more work than it used to be. I don’t know what Father Peters said to him, but every time I knocked on the door for help with a job, he’d turn the TV off and come outside to hold a rod or the lug wrench when I couldn’t manage it myself.
“I got an offer,” he said one day into the silence between us.
“On what?”
“The property. Guy wants to pay me six hundred grand for the house and the garage together.”
“Shit.” I fumbled the wrench I was holding and it fell to the concrete floor with a clatter. “That’s a lot of money. Who wants to pay that?”
“Fella who owns the doggy daycare in Montpelier. He wants to expand. Apparently people pay a lot for that shit.”
I laughed, because it was either that or cry. If he sold the garage, I’d have literally no place to go.
“I won’t say yes until you have a plan for yourself.”
That startled me into locking eyes with my father for the first time all day. We generally avoided eye contact whenever possible. “It’s your property,” I said. “You can do what you want with it.”
He looked away, uncomfortable. “You keep the place afloat lately, though.”
True enough. “Would it be, uh, good for you to be retired?” Six hundred g’s would buy a lot of hooch. He might just go on a big bender until it killed him.
“I’ll have to think about that,” he said quietly. “Seems like I need someplace to go every morning. Maybe I’ll get a part-time job somewhere just to get me out of the house.”
That sounded like a hell of a plan. I’d get one myself if I thought anyone would have me.
The phone rang then, and I crossed the garage to answer it, because answering phones was a good job for the one-armed repairman. “Nickel Auto Body,” I said into the receiver.
Now the place would never be Nickel and Son.
*
The rest of the week went slowly. It was January and bitter cold. My drafty bedroom over the garage never got warmer than sixty-five degrees, and the garage was even chillier.
To keep myself busy, I sorted through our entire collection of exterior paints, throwing away the ones that were too old to use, and labeling the ones that were still good. A month ago I’d assumed the cleaning jobs I did would contribute to the future marketability of the place. Now nothing mattered, and it was depressing as hell.
Every minute I didn’t worry about my future I spent worrying about Sophie. I wondered where she was and what she was doing.
On Wednesday, I went to the NA meeting in the church. The others fussed over my arm and asked me where I’d been. I spared them the tricky details and told them I’d gotten jumped. They made sympathetic noises when I told them all about the unwitting fix they gave me at the hospital and how awful the withdrawal had been.
“And I had seven months clean,” I grumbled.
“You still fucking do,” the Harley dude argued. “It doesn’t count unless you did it to yourself.”
“On the bright side,” I added, “I’m on Suboxone, and that shit works.”
Some of them had taken it before so I got some tips. “And when they start to wean you off it, ask us for help,” Harley dude insisted.
“Will do,” I said. And I meant it, too. I felt shored up by this group of people, even if I wished I’d lived my whole life without knowing what meetings were like. I both loved and hated meetings, which is funny because I both loved and hated heroin, too. But one of those things wouldn’t leave me homeless and toothless within a decade. So I guess meetings were it for me.
When the meeting ended, though, I snuck out of the church and went home alone. Instant buzz kill. I ate some take-out food and listened to the radio just to hear other voices.
And I tried like hell not to wonder what they were serving at the Community Dinner and whether they needed any help. Now that I’d finally done the wise thing and distanced myself from Sophie, I knew I couldn’t go there anymore.