Orphans

I am, and have been for the last decade, an orphan. This is a term rarely applied to adults; it has Dickensian overtones and lives in James Michener's home for the poor in Pennsylvania, or John Irving's Cider House. It smacks of tragedy and abuse, and yet it is the fate of most  humans.

A true orphan lacks not just mother and father but family as a whole. An abundance of siblings who are alive and well waters orphancy down. So does an excess of money. Orphans, ideally, are small, pale, have runny noses and worn shoes. They exist on the edge of society and are taken care of by draconian trustees who are in it for the bucks and perversions.

But in real life, most orphans have jobs and wives or husbands, children, friends. The fact that they have lost both parents is not, in the word of Oscar Wilde, carelessness. We outlive our parents and not much thought is given to the effect this may have on a grown adult. Personally, I think it's a staggering change in one's life.

For many, many years, I have believed that you cannot be truly free until your parents die--not a popular opinion, I assure you. But I think it's only then  that we can fully seek a life of our own without fear of reproach, criticism, disappointment or judgement. Most of us are so imbued with our own parents' expectations that any major decision to be made contains a strain of, "What will mom and dad think?" Often, this alone will sway our choices--we want to be what they wanted us to be, regardless of our own age and desires.  

More and more, as the elderly live increasingly long lives, we find ourselves taking care of them and--still fearful of their opinions--delaying our own dreams. What happens to a 60-year-old with 90-year-old parents? Sandwiched between having to work and raise children and, once this is done, assuming responsibility for elderly parents, he or she finds that the time to realize one's own expectations has suddenly vanished. 

When my mother died in France some 17 years ago, I brought my father to the US. Being raised in the UK and having spent many years here, he largely led his own life--until his Alzheimer's became increasingly pronounced. 

When this occurred, my life went on hold. There were midnight calls; his thoughts were such that he would often wake in the night confused and terrified. Once, while on vacation, I received a phone message telling me he had gotten involved in an altercation and was going to be evicted from his apartment in his retirement community. I drove 1000 miles in a day to find him strapped in a hospital bed; this bright, intelligent man had overstepped the bounds of what is allowed for the elderly and been relegated to the role of raving lunatic in a second-rate clinic.

For a while, every decision I made had him at the forefront. When he died following a fall from a window in an assisted living  facility, I was horrified, guilty, relieved. The last emotion was the hardest to accept. I carried his ashes back to France and let them go where those of my mother lay in Paris'  Père Lachaise cemetery. Only then--and now an orphan--did I feel I could resume my own life.

Here's installment 86 of Wasted Miracles.

Chapter 21

Captain Roderick Stuart’s mistress said, “I think we may be having a minor problem with one of the Gray Panthers?”

The captain’s eyebrows rose slightly. He was entering the events of the past 24 hours in the day’s log. He did this by hand at the same time every evening, shunning the computer  recently installed in his cabin. At the end of this trip, he would personally deliver the log to the company archives and accompany the records officer to make sure the volume was placed where it should be, on the shelf bearing his own name engraved on a small brass plaque.

“Or maybe not so minor,” his mistress continued. “It depends.”

“On?” The captain did not turn around, continued writing in the even hand he had learned in public school and developed over years at sea.

“On whether this particular gentleman is actually doing what one of the bartender suspects, which is selling small quantities of what seems to be cocaine to some of the younger passengers.”

“Which bartender?”

“Julio Castro.”

The Captain paused, thought for a moment. He knew the name of each member of his crew as well as the number of years spent in the service of the Royal Scottish Line. Finally, he nodded.

“Castro. Won an award two years ago, saved the life of a passenger, applied CPR.”

“That’s the one.”

“Good man. And the Panther?”

“Earl Thorogood Robinson. Seventy-one. First trip.”

The Captain once again thought for a moment. “American, from Georgia or somesuch. Tall man. Full head of hair, military mustache?”

“Former professor, Renaissance Literature. Very popular with the ladies; his dancecard his full every evening.”

Invisible

A couple of weeks back I was with a friend and we commented that we seldom, if ever, got the second look anymore. The second look, should it need to be defined, is exactly that: the look given after the first passing glance; the look--more often than not from the opposite sex--that seeks more information.

This is a subtle change in a man's--and a woman's--life for it implies that we have moved from the arena where gender matters to the one where it does not. We have become largely faceless, and people begin to call us "sir" and "ma'am." The attractiveness and sexual energy we relied upon to make contact with our opposites is just about gone.

When does this happen? And do we cause it by somehow giving up our claim to life or does it simply occur in spite of our best efforts?

Some days ago I heard a not-at-all-pleasant woman in her mid-60s bemoan the fact that she lacks a boyfriend and I wondered if the sourness of her disposition chased men away, or was it the lack of men that caused her unhappiness? Or had she simply become invisible, another divorced white-haired matron with a Barbara Bush hairdo, back problems and a collection of Trader Joe shopping bags?

I see old men in felts hats wearing their pants halfway up their chests and find it impossible to believe they ever got a first look, never mind a second one. But they must have, otherwise many of us would not be here. Often they're walking alone, widowers or divorcees perhaps, carrying their solitude like heavy knapsacks. There is one man I have seen nearly every day for a year, and though I made some resolute efforts to speak with him on more than one occasion, his loneliness is so physically intense that words, I fear, don't get through. He stands in front of the Post Office hours on end, smoking one cigarette after another. He politely opens the door for women as if this small act might render him visible again, but he ignores men, looks through us as if we are not there. I often wonder if he's waiting for a letter, for some word that will allow him to relink his life to those of others.

Here's installment 85 of Wasted Miracles.

She had a key to the travel office. The manager had given it to her so she could come in early or stay late and work the computers, learn the trade.
It was quiet there, the glow of the monitor a splash of dim light in the dark room. Mollie booked a flight to Nassau, first class, what the hell. No passport needed to go to Nassau, they were so happy to get tourists. When the computer asked her if she wanted a round-trip, she hesitated a moment, tabbed over to the “yes” box, punched “enter,” cleared the screen. She checked the printer to make sure the ream of perforated tickets was in place, hit another key. The printer hummed, zipped back and forth. A moment later a second machine came to life and printed her itinerary in triplicates.
She found an American Airline ticket folder, the kind with the little slash on the inside for the boarding pass, folded the paperwork and carefully inserted it. She blew a kiss at the screen before turning the computer off.
***
Mamadou Dioh sat in his darkened apartment sipping a large Wild Turkey. It was his third and he was stone sober. The liquor was no longer sweet on the tongue and he could feel it churning acids in his stomach. Another death, another victim.
He took out his wallet and unfolded the small piece of paper he had found on the Zulu’s body, looked at the elegant cursive script, read the words, replaced the note between two credit cards.
The girl was alive, that was something. Better than Amelie. Whatever he felt about the death of Colin’s policeman friend was at best mixed. What Mamadou had told Colin was true: people who enforced the law woke up each morning with the dim notion that this day might be their last. Or if they didn’t, they should. The policeman had been fat, poorly dressed, hardly in keeping with the image necessary to uphold the law. He was a racist, that was obvious from his conversation in the car, from his gleefully quoting the article from that morning’s newspaper. His gun probably had neither been cleaned nor fired in ages. He’d been taken by surprise; those were the breaks, as Americans said.
And Colin? Colin had been totally unprepared, weaponless by choice. A stupid choice, no matter the philosophy. One did not enter the den of the lion naked. One took precautions. All in all, Colin should have been thankful not to have been the one left behind. Mamadou sipped his drink, drained it, poured another, smaller one. If he himself had committed an error, it was by involving others in his affairs, by not having the necessary wherewithal to handle the Zulu alone, as he’d sworn he would.
Allies, Mamadou thought. More often than not ill-chosen, rarely up to the task.
And now, of course, there was this quandary. It amused Mamadou slightly that things never quite worked out as one might hope. Killing the Zulu was supposed to be the end of it. He had anticipated relief, elation, some sort of catharsis, instead he was now faced with yet another moral choice, this one involving a great deal of money. Very strange.
Mamadou Dioh took his glass to the kitchen, emptied the remaining amber liquid into the sink. He felt a bit lightheaded, troubled by the conversation with Marsh, and not at all vindicated by the events of the past few days.
[[[

Remembrance of Things Past (With Excuses to Proust)

Back when I drank morning, noon and night, when Xanax and Propralonol were my saviors, when I held a responsible job and traveled the world; back when I knew my unchecked addiction would kill me soon, I discovered an alley near where I worked and decided it would be my own.

It was in downtown Washington, blocks from the White House. Nearby was a cellar bar called the Hung Jury, a dingy place I had entered once or twice to celebrate minor promotions. There was an alcove in the alley big enough for a large cardboard box and there I would find shelter when the time came to be irrevocably on my own. I knew this eventuality would come to pass, had no doubt about my future as a homeless drunk. Strangely, there was a degree of peace to this certainty, as there is whenever one reaches the acceptance that things really are hopeless, that no miracle will save the sinner. We are all, I thought at the time, on a predestined path, and that I had found mine relatively early was a blessing of sorts. This was more than two decades ago.

More recently I've come to reconcile myself to the high probability that I will end up alone. This is neither happy nor sad--it simply is, but it isn't what I wanted. My preference would be to have not so much a mate as a partner, someone whose skills would complement mine, whose vision of a future would match my ideal fairly closely, someone, in short, to build with. I know I've had my opportunities but when they came I may have been unwilling to do the maintenance work necessary to keep things going. Occasionally the other person was wrong, and once she was unavailable for worthwhile reasons.

Once again, there's some peace to be had. Even if it is not particularly pleasant, it is possible to plan on being alone and I suspect I've been doing just that on many levels for several years. Like Noah, I seem to have acquired two of almost everything so there will always be a spare. I have books for another lifetime, and enough ideas and plots to keep me writing and entertained for even longer than that. I am debating on whether it would be wise to start hoarding toilet paper now (there will be a shortage, I am sure), or later.

What the hell... I'll have to give all this more thought.

Here's installment 84 of Wasted Miracles.

Colin hung up the phone slowly, the breath ebbed out of him, his throat closed, a flood of saliva pooled in his mouth. A great weariness enveloped him, swathed him like a blanket. He gagged, rushed to the bathroom, felt his gut constrict. He knelt in front of the toilet bowl (the porcelain god, Orin called it) and retched acid fluid, smelled the acrid odor of his emptying stomach. After awhile he stood, washed his face, rinsed out his mouth, spat foulness into the washstand. He had believed Mamadou in their mad flight from the scene, blindly allowed the African’s whispered entreaties to sway him and they had run and Joe had been alive and they could have saved him. A minute or two, no more.
Colin peered at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, raised an arm, smashed the glass. It exploded around his fist, bright shards showered the floor tiles, broke again and scattered. He held his hand up, saw glass splinters embedded in his knuckles, felt no pain. He watched drops of blood form there, turn into rivulets that pooled between his fingers and ran down to his wrist and forearm.
He stood there for a very long time and the blood fell to the floor, no more than a trickle of dirty red between his shoes. He imagined the blood flowing out of his friend’s body and wondered if it was the exact same color. He turned on the cold water tap, ran his hand beneath it until it regained sensation, a vague indistinct pain that failed to focus his anger.
The phone rang and Colin walked to the living room, picked it up without thinking. He heard Mamadou’s rich West African voice. “Colin? Are you all right?”
Colin shook his head.
“Colin? Are you there?”
Colin nodded twice, whispered, “Yes.”
“There’s something you should know, something I didn’t have time to tell you before. When we were in the Zulu’s house...”
Colin cut him off. “No. There’s something you should know.” He sat, switched hands on the phone, felt sticky liquid across his palm. “When we left him, Joe was alive. You forced us to leave and we could have saved him. One or two more minutes and--”
Mamadou’s voice hardened. “We didn’t have one or two more minutes.”
“That’s not true. We’ll never know that.”
“The police--”
“The police took its time coming. You counted on that, factored it in. We could have taken him to a hospital.”
“And said what, Colin? Explained it how?”
Colin felt a weight against the back of his eyes. “I don’t know. It wouldn’t have mattered.”
“You’re upset.”
“Upset?” The word struck Colin as ridiculous. He felt the relief of anger sweep him, sensed the flight of reason. He said, “We’re murderers.” And hung up.
***

Slugs

A couple of decades ago I lived in downtown Washington, DC, in a grand old apartment building on Connecticut Avenue. The Devonshire Towers was right near the National Zoo and at night during the summer months I could hear the lions roar. I owned a car but seldom drove it. Mostly, I walked. Two miles to work, half a mile to the grocery store, about the same distance to my favorite bars and restaurants. I took the bus or Metro in inclement weather. Cabs were affordable so I'd hail one if I was in a real hurry.

Since that time, I've noticed that I--and many of my friends--have given up most forms of physical exertion, including the mildest. In a completely unofficial survey, I've asked them: When was the last time you manually rolled up the window of a car? Opened a door at a store? Swept instead of vacuumed? Climbed stairs? When did you walk a mile, with a purpose other than seasonal tourism? Change the tires of your own car? And I've asked: Do you own an electric toothbrush or shaver, a mixer, an electric drill or screwdriver, a power mower? Do you blow leaves instead of raking them? Do you have a manual hedge clipper, a gas barbecue? Does your car have a manual or automatic transmission?

Almost every appliance available today is not so much designed to work better or longer as it is to reduce the amount of effort it takes to do a simple chore. The result, of course, is something that costs more, breaks, requires repairs or regular replacement. It is not something you can fix because you have neither the tools nor the knowledge to do so. So what it comes down to is this: we have become a nation of slugs.

Somehow, thanks to science, nutrition and the demise of predators and jobs that kill, we have come to live very much longer than our parents even as, physically, we do far less. And, in fact, I think most of us do nothing with those extra years. Nirvana may be a double-wide, a giant screen high-def TV and an open account with Domino's Pizza. But then again, who's to say that's wrong? Maybe the gods have a sense of humor and we are meant to take up as much space, time and energy as can possibly fit into one extended lifetime and to hell with everything--and everyone---else.

Oh, wait! Isn't that pretty close to the definition of capitalism?

OK, so now I'm going to get a lot of you-god-damned-socialist mail. Worth it, I guess. Here's installment 83 of Wasted Miracles.

So it was all about drugs. Colin whipped the old Porsche onto the Rte. 66 access, drifted into the left lane, took the Arlington exit. A get-rich-quick rip-off that had gone wrong and cost the lives of four people. No, five. Herbie was gone too. Small loss.
And Josie hadn’t remembered him. There’d been nothing in her eyes save exhaustion; the hour or so she and Colin had spent that one-and-only time long ago had been washed away. Colin wondered whether he should feel mildly insulted, decided his relief far overshadowed any bruise that Josie’s negligent memory might inflict to his pride. And, if he were truthful, he had to admit that the encounter had become vague in his mind as well, the commotion of the moment left little save a hazy recollection of blonde hair and pale skin. He wondered whether Catherine would ask, how he would respond. Maybe she’d laugh. Probably not.
It would be easy enough to track the ship’s whereabouts. Two phone calls, three at most. Various authorities kept track of such things, and any travel agent would be more than happy to supply a potential customer with information on the Royal Scottish Line.
Colin parked the Porsche, rode the elevator to his apartment, checked his voicemail. Two messages from Orin, one from Ed Kuminsky. “Colin? Ed. Joe was my sponsor, you remember? I talked to you a couple of days ago. I guess you must have heard by now, about Joe, I mean.” There was a silence, a long sigh. “Jesus, I can’t believe it. I don’t know what he was doing out there. It’s insane. Some people are saying he was into it, you know, that he was scoring but I know that’s not true. So, you know, if you hear anything like that...” The words trailed off, picked up again. “Anyway. I know you were his sponsor, he respected you a lot, he told me so. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Unloading, I guess. But I thought you should know. I guess what really gets me is that he could have been saved, you know? Whoever he was with, they just left him there to bleed to death. He coulda been saved. Bastards just ran away, left him to die in the street like some sort of animal. Jesus.” Pause, sharp intake of breath. “Well, look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be telling you all this stuff, it’s part of the investigation. I needed someone to talk to, and you’re my grand-sponsor, even though we never met, and I was wondering, maybe we could get together sometime? Joe’d been wanting us to, he thought it might be good for me. Maybe he mentioned it? So if you’d like to, get together, that is, give me a call, OK? Jesus. Just fuckin’ left him out there in the night. Jesus. I’m sorry. I’m really out of control about this, makes me want to find the cocksuckers myself and watch them die real slow. Shit. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t burden you with this. Call me, OK? Here’s the number, in case you lost it.”

So Legalize It, Already Part II

What if...
...the moneys spent by the government on farm subsidies--approximately $20 billion annually--were instead given to US farmers willing to grow marijuana, poppies and coca?
...in a few years the United States could produce all the now-illicit drugs the country presently consumes?
...the North American drug clientele found a better deal at home, available legally and safely and because of this the Mexican drug cartels went out of business?
...the production of drugs in the US was taxed at several levels, as are the production and sales of tobacco products?
...the Afghans had no buyers for their opium and our war there ended?

And what if all the money saved in...
...our futile effort to control drugs
...our war in Afghanistan
...our interdiction programs
...the war in our streets financed largely by guns and drugs
...our expenditures to house thousand upon thousands of prisoners guilty of drug-related infractions
...the legal costs involved in putting them there...

What if all that money was spent on more highly esteemed programs like education, better treatment of our vets and elderly, more low-cost housing, a national health insurance system, music and arts programs for kids, and repairs to the country's infrastructure--our roads and highways, bridges, public transportation and hospital.

As the Beach Boys once sang, wouldn't it be nice?

It's time to legalize drugs, to free ourselves of a yoke that has already broken the back of nations to our south and now threatens ours. The bad guys are winning the war, folks. It has already cost us more more in dollars and lives than World War II, Korea and Vietnam combined and there's no end in sight.
It's time to stop it and make better use of the vast riches such a peace might produce.

Here's installment 82 of Wasted Miracles.
Mollie Catfish squared the pile of bills in front of her. It wasn’t as tall as she’d hoped. She had closed her checking account, maxed out both her credit cards and sold the stuff she’d bought with them for twenty-five cents on the dollar to another girl at the club. She’d borrowed $500 from Bennie the bouncer. There was $3,472.32 and it was all she could come up with. She remembered the Rolex she’d lifted from a trucker, found it, rushed from her apartment. An hour later she was back, seething. The pawnshop owner had offered her a tenner for it. “It’s a fake, honey. Twenty bucks on K Street.” She’d taken the ten, balled the ticket in her hand and tossed it angrily into the gutter.
Three-thousand four-hundred and eighty-two dollars would have to do. There was no time to plan a scam, no time even to turn a few tricks. In spite of herself, she felt vaguely thankful for that.

Hunger

When I was a kid in Paris, my family was fairly poor and in the post-war years, very little decent food was available. The major cities of France--and indeed of all Europe--were devastated and what little sustenance could be found was prohibitively expensive. I was raised on mare's milk, which is strangely blue, horse meat, leeks and cabbage, and a horrible concoction called bouillie.

Bouillie was yesterday's bread boiled in water, with a dash of red wine added and salted to taste. It resembled porridge or perhaps mucousy oatmeal, and there is not a Frenchman my age who, to this day, does not shudder in remembrance. Foods like bouillie--and there were many--lacked vitamin, protein, and even carbohydrate value. They were unsatisfactory and unsatisfying. As a result, most French people my age who were raised in the metropolitan centers have terrible teeth and very poor eyesight. And we're always hungry. Or at least, I am.

So it has been a revelation, recently, to attend 12-step meetings dedicated to accepting my addiction to food.

One of the very first facts I came to terms with is that I often cannot recognize when I am hungry. At some time between childhood and now, hunger transcended being a sensation for me; it became a feeling, and over the years I have assigned hunger to a number of other emotions that have nothing to do with my need for food. Anger, boredom, fear, frustration, loneliness, all become reasons to eat, reasons to avoid dealing with reality, reasons to instead rely on that good physical feeling of a full belly and a desire to sleep. Avoidance, denial, a yearn to control, all very familiar feelings to someone who spent many, many years dependent on alcohol and drugs.

With food dependence, the principles remain the same: spirituality, an acceptance of powerlessness, a willingness to ask for help. But if a program for alcoholics must stress total abstinence from all alcohols and psychoactive drugs, one for overeaters cannot blandly proscribe all foods. The problem is not black and white anymore--I may be able to avoid drinking alcohol, but I can't forswear eating. There's a level of complexity here that I have not faced before. I have choice, an uneasy word for an addict.

The meetings I have attended so far are low-key affairs, quieter than AA, somewhat more restrained, free of swearing and overdone familiarity. I like them. I like the quiet dignity of the people there. I came in with years of sobriety and a feeling that this new arena would be a snap. At my initial meeting, I was told by one young attendee that there's no credit given for memberships in other programs. Busted, on the very first day...

But I'll keep coming back.

Here's installment 81 of Wasted Miracles.

They sat on the front steps of the building housing the ARC. Josie shook her head, nodded, looked confused. “Yes, I mean no, I didn’t even know Herbie was a dealer, not really. I kind of suspected it, he always had money and didn’t seem to have a job, but it’s not like I really knew, you know?”
She lit a cigarette and Colin saw her inhale exactly as Catherine did. She held the smoke in, let it out slowly. He said, “OK, so a friend took you to their place, and the Zulu fixed you up.”
She inhaled, nodded.
“But you didn’t know about the missing drugs? Herbie had never told you anything about that?”
She looked at the cigarette, fixed her eyes on the glowing ember for a moment, flipped the butt into the parking lot. “No. Herbie was always kinda secretive about almost everything. I mean, he liked to show off, liked to flash money, pay for things, but it wasn’t that kind of a relationship, you know? Like, we didn’t talk a lot about stuff, real stuff. Mostly we went out. Took cabs, ate at restaurants, clubs, places like that. I think he liked to show me off.” She held up her hands, looked at her nails, smiled crookedly. “I looked kind of better than this a few days ago...”
Colin took her elbow. “Josie, listen, this is important. I know it’s not pleasant to think about, but you’ve got to. He thought you knew, the Zulu. That’s why they took you. That’s why they gave you the drugs, right?”
She nodded.
“But you didn’t know?”
She nodded again.
Colin rubbed his forehead. “So why would he keep you alive, Josie? It doesn’t make sense.”
She opened her mouth, said, “I...” Fell quiet. Colin watched her watching cars moving in the parking lot. She took a cigarette from a pack rolled in the sleeve of her tee shirt, stuck it between her lips but didn’t light it. She said, “Comfort.”
“What?”
“The other black guy, the nicer one. His name was Comfort. You know, like ‘calm’; like ‘serenity.’ He was the taller one. He came into the room where they were keeping me, came in and told me what to say.”
“I’m not getting this, Josie. There’s something missing here.”
Her voice became annoyed. “He told me what to say! Like he knew. He knew where--Oh, Jesus!”
Colin leaned close to her. “What did he tell you, Josie. Word for word. Try to remember. Try real hard.”
***

The End of Journalism

I was working in the newsroom of the Washington Post during Watergate and if Watergate is not a familiar term, please stop reading now; you'll only get confused. I did nothing to contribute to the adventure save, once or twice, field three a.m. phone calls from Martha Mitchell, the deranged wife of the equally deranged Attorney General, John Mitchell. Mrs. Mitchell believed her husband was trying to poison her because she knew too much about Nixon's misbehaviors in the White House. The newsroom operators had no patience for Martha and would switch her call to the lowest person on the totem poll, me. I would listen, take notes, and thank her for the information. Then I would type a memo on my IBM Selectric and pass it on to the night editor of the national desk, who would glance at it and put it in the circular file, also known as the wastebasket.

Watergate was the beginning of an interesting era in American reporting. Investigative journalism soon became the preferred field of study for hundreds of would-be Bernsteins and Woodwards and blanketyblank-gate stories proliferated. Some were important, others not. The Pentagon papers, Contra-gate, Iran-gate, NAFTA-gate, all were events of significant historical import. Others were minor, but all served a purpose.

Now, we seem to have abandoned investigative reporting. It is overly expensive, makes enemies among advertisers at a time when papers are barely surviving, and it lacks a public following. Dedicating a team of reporters, editors, checkers and support staff to the pursuit of a single story is hopelessly dated. The media's main job nowadays is to rewrite press releases and entertain, rather than inform. Readers, by an large, are not really interested in news. A none-too-subtle indicator that investigative journalism is dead is hammering us today. Not one single mainstream newspaper--not the Times, Globe, Post, WSJ or Chronicle unearthed Bernard Madoff's pyramid schemes. No one questioned his profits, investigated his background. No one in the media blew the whistle until it was far too late. Rather, financial--and other--reporters were writing puff pieces about the future of China's finances, the future of GM, and the economy's rosy outlook for the coming decade.

“News," said England's Lord Norfthcliffe in 1896, "is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.” Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe, was a powerful British newspaper and publishing magnate. During his lifetime, he exercised vast influence over British popular opinion, buying stolid, unprofitable newspapers and transforming them to make them lively and entertaining for the mass market. His interest in news was marginal, except when it entertained the reader. He would feel right at home today.

Here's installment 80 of Wasted Miracles.

Shortly before noon Catherine came back to the ARC to pick Colin up but he told her he was going to be staying around until after Josie ate lunch with the rest of the patients, he’d catch a bus home, it wasn’t that far. Catherine gave him a long questioning look which he chose to disregard. She thought he was strangely cheery and that surprised her, but she had dictated the rules of the day and chose to abide by them. She drove home, took a long bath, made a sandwich out of ham, Camembert and sourdough bread.
She wondered whether anything would come of that evil night, whether this time her daughter would be able to shake off the chains and not merely rattle them. It didn’t look good, not really, and all her experience, strength and hope were feeling pretty puny. She recited program mantras to herself but couldn’t shake the thought of Josie maybe not making it and it frightened her, left a dreadful empty feeling in her stomach.
She shoveled the sandwich into the garbage can beneath the kitchen sink, looked at her watch. Almost one-thirty. She walked to mirror, inspected herself, peered at her own face. Still attractive, she thought, still capable of attracting people, men. A face capable of starting over again. She decided that with Josie back and safe, she would make an appointment with a lawyer next week. She didn’t know exactly who to call but there were plenty of women friends who’d gone through divorces and come out better for it. She wondered if Lars would be shocked, incredulous. Probably not. Surely he too must have come to realize that his lack of concern, even of sympathy, proved beyond a doubt there was nothing left in their union worth salvaging. Who knows, she thought, he might even be grateful. The bastard.
***
The counselor was peeved. His name tag read Lester Shakey and he was a generally nice man, the only professional staff at the ARC who was not in recovery. This shortcoming had long ago ceased to irk him--he had been dealing with alcoholics and drug addicts for years and come to the conclusion that it was not necessary for the inmates to run the asylum--but today he was in a bad mood not made better by the man seated before him.
Lester Shakey’s office was uncluttered and sunny, his desk nicely proportioned and arranged to be in the exact center of the small room. He wore pressed blue jeans, a messageless sweatshirt and white boat shoes with no socks. His face was round with very light blue eyes that now focused on Colin’s mouth.
“It’s important that you understand, Mr. Marsh, how very crucial a time this is in Josie’s treatment.” He smiled, showing evenly gapped teeth. “Crucial. Josie has to get familiar with her new environment. This is all very different for her, it’s--”
“Her fourth rehab.”
Shakey frowned, annoyed at the interruption. “Fourth? I thought it was the third.” He shuffled papers, found a blue folder, opened it, read something slowly, lips moving. The fingertip of his right index traced a line. “Right you are. Fourth. Says so right here in her records.” He smiled again, paused as if to make a point, continued. “Josie is very confused, she--”
Colin cut in again. “She knows exactly where she is and why. This is not a new dance, Mr. Shakey. Josie has been through this before. She probably knows some aspects of this treatment better than you do. And I think there are some things she should know, things I can tell her that I truly believe will be helpful. All I need is another fifteen minutes or so with her. After that, she’s yours.”
Shakey shook his head, lips pursed. This was highly irregular and he didn’t like it. “I wish you had consulted me before talking to her, Mr. Marsh. You know the rules, no contacts with outsiders unless it’s supervised. It’s for their own good, you know.”
Colin wore his friendliest face. “I apologize. I should have checked in with you. Fifteen minutes. Please.”
Shakey decided this had gone far enough. He rose from behind his desk, motioned for the door. His visitor, however, did not rise, which forced Les Shakey to pretend he was actually going to do something else and resume his seat. He sighed, glanced at the full inbox on his left. He said, “Now I really must get back to work, Mr. Marsh.” And tried to rising trick again. Marsh didn’t move. Shakey sighed a second time, more loudly.
“Fifteen minutes, Mr. Marsh. I’ll be looking at the clock.”