The Way I Am Now (The Way I Used to Be)

It’s my last night home, and we’re sitting around watching TV in the living room after eating leftover Thanksgiving dinner for the second night in a row. Mom stands abruptly, looks at her watch, and says, “I’m gonna run to the grocery for a bit. Any requests?”

“We have a house full of food,” Dad points out, gesturing toward the kitchen.

“Well, sue me! I want something else,” she claps back.

He holds his hands up. “Okay, okay,” he says softly. “I was just saying.”

I have a sudden flashback to when I’m twelve, hearing my mom give my dad this same excuse—except she’d say “we.” We were going to the store or out for ice cream. Or we were going in search of something special I needed for a last-minute school assignment—me and her. Only we never went to the store or for ice cream or off to find that one missing item. She was taking me to a meeting. I remember she always had a bunch of go-to excuses at the ready, to pull out of her back pocket whenever she needed one. And as I look up at her now, I wonder if it’s still that way, because Dad’s right, after all, we have a ton of food in this house.

“Mom, can I come with you?” I ask, already getting off the couch.

She scrunches her eyebrows together and says, “To the store, really?”

“Yeah,” I tell her.

She shakes her head and says, “Don’t be silly. I’ll be home soon. Text me if you think of anything you want. Or anything you want to bring back to school with you.”

“No, Mom, I want to come,” I try to say more firmly as I make my way over to the door and tug my sneakers on.This belongs © NôvelDra/ma.Org.

She looks at me, almost getting annoyed, but then I nod, widen my eyes, try to secretly tell her I know we’re not actually going to the store.

“Oh,” she says, pushing her arms through her coat. “All right.”

She walks over to kiss my dad and says, “Be home soon.”

He looks up at her, then at me. “Well, now I wanna come too,” he jokes.

My mom swats his arm and shakes her head. “Goodbye,” she calls over her shoulder.

Outside, she pulls on her gloves and looks over at me but doesn’t say anything yet.

Once we’re in the car, I ask, “You’re going to a meeting, right?”

“Yes,” she answers. “You really want to come?”

“Yeah, I’ve sorta been thinking about it lately. Thinking maybe I should give it another try. As long as you don’t mind me tagging along with you?”

She shakes her head. “Not at all.”

We pull into the parking lot of a church and go inside, past all the stained glass and pews, down into the basement, to a room with a sign on the door that says AL-ANON MEETING TONIGHT 8PM.

The room is small and looks like it could be the basement of any home nearby, not much here to signal we’re even in a church. There’s a table set up with refreshments, white powdered doughnuts, and coffee. Pamphlets about Al-Anon and Alateen and AA and NA laid out for the taking. More and more people arrive, young and old, and my mom talks with everyone, lets me hang out in the back by the doughnuts. As everyone begins to find a seat around the circle, my mom gestures for me to come. I take the empty spot next to her.

“Well,” I hear my mom say next to me, but when I turn to look at her, I realize she’s not talking to me, she’s talking to everyone. “It’s a few minutes after eight, so why don’t we go ahead and get started.”

I look around the circle, trying to figure out who the facilitator is, the old man with the cane and the gray beard, the middle-aged woman in the fancy shoes who looks like she just came from a business meeting. Or maybe it’s the—

“Welcome, everyone,” my mom begins. “I’m Rosie, and my husband is an addict.” My mom is running this meeting. I just watch her, admire her, while she tells our story—her story—kind of in awe of how she can just put herself out here like this. “I know how hard the holidays can be for all of us, not just our loved ones. I certainly do a lot more worrying around this time of year,” she continues, and finally, she opens the floor. “Who would like to share?”

I just listen.

To the bearded man whose wife is an alcoholic. To the lady with the fancy shoes whose teenage daughter is relapsing right now. The girl who’s probably not much older than me, talking about her fiancé. The man whose brother is getting out of rehab this week. When there’s a lull in the conversation, my mom asks if anyone else would like to share and looks over at me.

“I’m Josh. My dad is . . . is an alcoholic, an addict,” I say, finding it so hard to get those words out. “This is my first time doing this since I was a kid. I’m just observing today—listening, I mean—if that’s okay.”

“That’s fine,” Mom says, and heads nod up and down in agreement around the circle. “Often, it helps to just know there are other people out there who can relate.”

Another person introduces themselves—a middle-aged man who could be anyone you pass on the street. “I’m struggling,” he says, clasping his hands together in front of him. “I try so hard to let go of that compulsion to want to control everything she does.” I’m not sure if his she is a wife or a child or what, but it doesn’t matter because I watch him lean forward over his lap and start crying. “But it’s so hard to trust her—hell, who am I kidding? It’s hard to trust anyone,” he finishes. Around the circle, heads nod in understanding and I realize I’m nodding along with them. The younger girl with the fiancé gets up and grabs the box of tissues that’s sitting on the refreshment table and brings it over to the man.

The meeting ends with the Serenity Prayer, and the woman next to me grabs my hand, holds on tightly. My mom reaches for my other hand, and even though it’s small in mine, it feels so strong, solid.

“I’m proud of you,” she says, looking over at me while we’re driving home.

“I didn’t do anything. You were great, though, Mom,” I tell her. “How long have you been doing that—leading the meetings, I mean?”

“A while.” She shrugs, then smiles and reaches over to mess up my hair. “So, what did you think? Will you be going again—I’m sure you can find a meeting near campus pretty easily.”

I nod. “Yeah, I think I might.”

“That would be good for you, with everything that’s been going on,” she says. “I’m always here—you know that—but a mother isn’t always what you need.”

I’m not exactly sure what she means by that, not sure if she’s talking about Dad or Eden or school or what, but I take this moment to ask her the question I’ve been too afraid to say out loud: “He seems different this time, right?”

She waits to look at me until we pull up to the red light. “He was really shaken when you didn’t come home over winter break last year. It hurt him.”

“I’m sorry,” I begin. “I didn’t mean to—”

“No, stop,” she interrupts. “That’s the point, you took a stand—you’ve never done that before.”

“Oh,” I mutter.

“And it didn’t just hurt him, it scared him. He realized he could lose you. That’s what’s different this time. As far as I can tell, anyway.”

“You’ve stood up to him lots of times,” I point out.

“Well, it’s different. He knows I’m not going anywhere. We’re in this thing together. For better or worse, right? That’s what I vowed, and I’ll be damned, it looks like I’m sticking to it. But you?” She pokes my arm. “You made no such promise. I think he finally gets that.”

“Do you regret it?” I ask her, though I’m not sure I’m ready for the answer. “Sticking to your promise, I mean.”

“No,” she responds. “Especially not lately.”

When we get home, equipped with a few bags of random groceries for good measure, Dad is outside in the driveway, illuminated by the motion lights on the side of the garage. He’s slowly dribbling one of my old basketballs I hadn’t seen since middle school, and when he sees us pull up on the side of the street, he tosses his cigarette on the ground, steps on it quickly.

“Does he really think I don’t know he’s smoking?” Mom says, shaking her head as she unbuckles her seat belt and starts getting out of the car.

I reach into the back seat for the bags, but Mom comes up behind me and touches my arm.

“I’ll get these,” she tells me. “Why don’t you go hang out with your father awhile, huh?”

“Yeah,” I agree, “okay.”

Dad starts walking down the driveway toward us, with the ball perched between his arm and his hip. “I was about to file a missing persons report on you two,” he jokes.

“Mother-son bonding knows no time constraints,” Mom says, always quick on her feet, in a different way than Dad is.

“Need help with those?” he asks.

“I’ve got it,” Mom says, hurrying up the driveway, stopping for just a second as Dad gives her a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t stay out here too late, boys,” she calls over her shoulder. “And, Joshua, don’t go too easy on him.”

I stay behind. Not sure what to say, I hold my hands up. He passes me the ball. I pass it back. He goes for a shot, but I block him. I take the shot instead.

He claps his hands and waits for the pass.

He tries to get past me, but I block him again.

And again. And again.

“Wow, all right,” Dad says, laughing. “You’re really not gonna go easy on your old man, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Good,” he says, and I think we both know we’re not talking about basketball anymore.

I pivot and jab, drive forward, stay a step ahead of him, make the basket. Over and over. I’m tiring him out, I can tell, but I don’t stop. Not until he’s standing there in the middle of our driveway, hands on hips, breathing heavy, smiling only a little when he says, “All right, all right.” He raises his hands in the shape of a T and shakes his head. “Time-out, okay? Time-out.”

“You done?” I call over to him.

“You got me.” He breathes out forcefully, bends over with his hands on his knees for a second before standing upright again. “You got me, Joshie.”

We go sit on the front steps, where Mom managed to stealthily leave two water bottles for us. He cracks open the first bottle and hands it to me, takes the second one for himself. We sit there side by side, drinking in long sips, both of us still catching our breath.

“Josh, do you know how proud I am of you?” he says, out of nowhere.

“Because of basketball.”

“Well, no,” he says. “I’m proud of you regardless of basketball.”

“You are?”

“How can you even ask me that?” he says, letting out this short puff of air. “Of course. Of course I am. It’s just a game.”

I nod, letting his words sink in, trying to figure out why that doesn’t feel true to me. It’s a game, sure. A game I’ve grown to hate. A game that’s taken so much from me, yet I can’t seem to let go of it, even though I know it’s just a game.

“It’s not, though. It’s not just a game to me,” I hear myself telling him. “It’s all I had.”

“What do you mean?” He’s shaking his head, squinting, not understanding. “Don’t say that. You have so much going for you.”

“No, I mean I clung to it. When you weren’t there. When you weren’t available.”

“When I was using, you mean?” he says.

“Yeah.”

“Josh, I—” he starts, but I’m not finished.

“I have held on to this game for so long, even when it’s unhealthy, even when I hate how it makes me feel, even when I hate myself for being a part of this team right now.” I have to stop and catch my breath, give my brain a chance to catch up with my words. “This fucking game has hijacked my life—and I hate it. God, I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore!”

“Josh,” he begins again, “no one is forcing you to stick with this if that’s not—”

“No, you are!”

“Me? I have never—”

“Yes, Dad. I have been forced to keep this up because I don’t trust that you’re going to be there for me. But this?” I pick up the ball that’s sitting between my feet. “This thing that’s just a game—it might only be a game, but it’s always there. It’s been the constant, when that’s what you should’ve been for me.”

He’s covering his mouth while he watches me, really listening to me.

“I—I’m a mess. I’m actively destroying my life over this,” I continue, and I can feel hot tears on my face already, but I don’t care. “Do you know I broke up with Eden? It was me. I broke up with her, even though I love her so much, because I thought I couldn’t trust her. But it’s you—you’re the one I don’t trust.”

He shakes his head, and I see the tears in his eyes, hear the sheer sadness in his voice when he says, “I never—” But he stops and lets out this heart-shattering sob. “I never knew you felt this way.” He gasps. “About any of it, I swear, I didn’t know. I thought . . .” He pauses. “You had your mother, and she is so great, so good,” he says, his voice trembling on that last word, as he jabs his fingers into the center of his chest, “so much better than me. I just thought—”

“Mom’s great. Yes, she’s a good person. She’s an amazing mother, but I need you, too—I can’t believe I have to tell you that.”

He takes the ball from my hands and drops it, letting it roll down the steps into the grass, and he pulls me in with both arms, just holding on, both of us holding on.

“Thank you,” he says when we part. “Thank you for trusting me enough, right now, to tell me all of this. I can take it, I promise you. I’m here, all right? I’m not going anywhere this time.”

“Okay,” I tell him.

“Okay?” he repeats.

We stand, and as we start toward the door, I feel like I have a weight—a physical weight—lifted off me, the heaviness I’ve been carrying around inside me for so long, gone.

“Dad, wait,” I say. “I’m proud of you too, you know that, right?”

When I get back to school Sunday night, I send Coach an email letting him know I’m going to miss practice the next day. I tell him I have a personal matter to take care of, even though I know he said having a personal life isn’t allowed.

I’m waiting outside my adviser’s office first thing in the morning—I get there even before the department’s office assistants show up. Because I finally have my priorities straight.