“Somewhere along the way,” I said to Alonzo. “My marriage turned into an LLC.” I waved the tickets as proof. “Joe and I became two adults joined in the business of raising a child. When we first met, I’d have gone anywhere with the guy. I listened rapturously to whatever he said. I delighted in his every little gesture. You wouldn’t believe the places we had sex! We got married, and of course I thought, This is what life is. But it wasn’t life. It was youth. And now it’s Joe going to jazz by himself and me cracking jokes about how cold and erratic I’ve become. Twenty years ago I was Johnny Appleseed sowing charm and bon mots. If you stuck your finger in my cheek, it would have sprung back like angel food. Now, my face is a moo shu pancake and people cross the street when they see me coming. And this stomach. It’s disgusting.”
“For what it’s worth,” Alonzo said. “I enjoy you.”
“You can’t possibly.”
“Nobody recites poems like you,” he said. “You attack them so matter-of-factly, with neither pretense nor portent.”
“But I’m an idiot.”
“You have beginner’s mind,” Alonzo said. “But it’s a fine mind. You always point out something I hadn’t noticed.”
“Only,” I said, referring to my insight of earlier that day.
“Only,” Alonzo seconded.
The muffled pop music became blaring pop music.
Timby had opened the door. “Mom! I figured it out.”
Alonzo and I exchanged intrigued looks and walked over.
On the GPS screen under PREVIOUS DESTINATIONS was a list of street names and numbers.
“The address Dad put in was nine hundred.”
“Deucedly clever, Mr. Holmes,” Alonzo said.
I looked around. We were in front of 915.
Alonzo pointed. Across the street, on the corner, a huge lawn. On the curb, in black-stenciled numbers: 900.
Beyond the lawn, a low-slung brick building. MAGNOLIA COMMUNITY CENTER. A folding chair propped open a door.
“I don’t even know what a community center is,” I mused.
“Hey, Timby,” Alonzo said, leaning into the car. “Can you do a cartwheel?”
“Yeah.”
“Good,” Alonzo said. “You can teach me.”
I gave Alonzo a grateful nod and started across the street.
A voice from the phone in Timby’s hand.
What-color-is-celery?
“Celery,” I called over my shoulder.
I cut a diagonal across the green expanse toward the open door. On the chair, a jar filled with freshly picked anemones.
From inside, light applause.
I burst in…
… to a much smaller room than I’d expected.
In a circle of folding chairs sat ten people with tattoos for twenty. No Joe.
“Welcome,” said a bald man in a leather vest. “Are you a newcomer?”
On the walls, posters: EASY DOES IT. KEEP IT SIMPLE. ONE DAY AT A TIME. KEEP COMING BACK.
Uh-oh.
All eyes were on me. Their faces were so compassionate and their spirits so broken, I couldn’t help but open up.
“I’m trying to find my husband,” I said. “He’s six foot two. Brownish hair with gray. Blue eyes. He can’t be a drunk. I don’t think. But I’m out of ideas. I hit my head. I’ve got my kid with me. He’s outside doing cartwheels with a poet who’s essentially my paid friend. I know this is anonymous and all, and you don’t like to rat each other out. But I really, really want to find my husband. So maybe if I tell you his name, you don’t have to say anything, you can just nod like All the President’s Men?”
Uncomfortable glances were flying, and how. They finally alighted on the man in the vest.
“If your life is being affected by an addict,” he offered gently, “we have literature.”
He gestured to a table of pamphlets and books. Beside them, a coffeemaker, a random collection of mugs, and a carton of hazelnut creamer marked SEX ADDICTS ONLY.
“Ohhhh!” I said. “You’re sex. My husband isn’t that.”
Perhaps I let some distaste creep into my voice because a woman began to cry softly.
“How about I just go,” I said, stepping backward. “Good luck with… the journeys.”
I went outside, covered my face with my hands, and stood there groaning.
“You’re it!” Timby’s voice through the breeze.
I looked up.
Alonzo chased him into a round building at the other end of a breezeway.
In groovy ’70s font: PRINCE OF PEACE.
A church. I followed the wide and welcoming path lined with freshly planted flowering kale and purple pansies.
I grabbed a brass door handle the size of a cricket bat and entered a low-ceilinged, carpeted narthex. That’s right, narthex. It was on a Word of the Day calendar decades ago and of all the words I’d forgotten, narthex wasn’t one.
Alonzo sat at an upright piano against the wall.
“What’s your favorite song?” he asked Timby.
“‘Love You Hard.’”
“I don’t know that one.”
“It’s by Pansy Kingman,” Timby said. “The star of I Know, Right?” He noticed me. “Where were you?”
“Nowhere,” I said. My eyes ached. Maybe it was from going from sunlight to darkness… I needed to sit down.
“Give me a moment?” I said to Alonzo.
I pulled open the door leading to the main, big church part (not a Word of the Day, apparently).
“You’re going to church?” Timby asked.
“I’m going into a church.”
Alonzo played a perky intro on the piano and began to sing.
“‘If it hadn’t been for Cotton-Eyed Joe, I’d a been married a long time ago. Where did you come from? Where did you go? Where did you come from, Cotton-Eyed Joe?’”
I stepped inside. The church opened up to me. Light filtered in from on high through stained glass. More light through clear side windows. Halogen lights dropped gracefully from long, thin wires. Candles burned in red votives. Incense lingered in the air.
I sat down in a pew and the thoughts flooded.