Clegg - Ninety days: a memoir of recovery

As snow fills the places
where you must have walked,
you start back to where you began,
that place you again prepare to leave,
alone and warm, again intact, starting out.

Daniel Halpern, from White Field

Forget yourself.

Henry Miller

It looks like Oz. This is what I think as Manhattan comes into view through the windshield of Daves jeep. The crowded towers poke the sky with their metal and glass and in the midday haze look faraway, mythic, more idea than place. Were driving in thick traffic that moves swiftly and in unison. A month ago I hadnt noticed the city receding behind us as we drove from Lenox Hill Hospital to the rehab in White Plains. We didnt talk much then and were not talking much now.

Dave is playing music I dont recognize. A charcoal-voiced girl is crying with as much earnestness as irony alongside an acoustic guitar. He tells me her name and it sounds more like a department store than a person. He compares her to another singer I dont know, and I feel as if Ive lost fluency in a language that once was second nature. Between Lenox Hill and rehab Ive been in treatment for six weeks, but it seems like years, and I imagine during that time new bands coming and going, movies capturing the attention of the masses and being forgotten, books sparking controversy or indifference, and the roar of it all fading to make way for new entries in the cultural lottery. Dave tells me about a play he and Susie have just seen and I feel myself shrinking in the seat, becoming kid-sized. Up ahead, Oz juts higher above the horizon.

Its early April, a Monday. Were driving to Daves writing studio on Charles Street in the West Village. Hes offered me the place for a few weeks while I find somewhere to live. Ive just finished four weeks in a small drug and alcohol rehab on the grounds of an old mental asylum. Dave drove me there after I was released from the psych ward at Lenox Hill Hospital, where I wound up after a two-month bender that ended in a fistful of sleeping pills, a bottle of vodka, a crack pipe stuffed to bursting, and an ambulance. The small literary agency I co-owned and ran for four years is gone, all my clients have found new agents, our employees have scattered to new jobs or left New York, and whatever money I once had has been wiped out, leaving in its place a rising debt of legal, hospital, and rehab bills. The eight-year relationship with my boyfriend, Noah, is over, and the apartment at One Fifth Avenue his grandmother bought him, where we lived for six years, is no longer my home. I can sleep at Daves office, but I have to be out between ten and five so he can work.

The song changesthe girl is talking more than singing, the guitar is now a celloand I wonder what Ill do all day, how Ill fill up the hours, where Ill go.

Sure you want to do this? Dave asks cautiously. Sure you should be coming back here? He turns the music down and keeps his eyes on the road while he voices my own doubts. Im not sure of anything. Im thirty-four years old. Unemployed. Unemployable in a field I worked in for twelve years. I have a mountain of terrifying paper waiting for me: the settlement agreement with my exbusiness partner, Kate, dismantling the agency; bills from my lawyers; hospital bills and insurance forms; e-mails and lettersangry, loving, and everything in betweenfrom friends, former colleagues, and family. The balance of the rehab bill is at least forty thousand dollars and likely much more. My sister Kim, who lives in Maine, in the midst of picking up and dropping off her twin boys from school, play dates, and baseball practice, has taken over the bills, the accounts, the lawyer, and our plan is to go over every last difficult bit of it once Im settled in at Daves.

Ive arranged to see my sponsor, Jack, at an evening meeting in the West Villagea beginners meeting is how he describes it. I first met Jack on the third or fourth day in the hospital. After a rough, shame-shocked start there when I refused to see or speak to anyone, I eventually agreed to meet hima friend of a friend, my age, curly haired, boyish, gayand he offered to be my sponsor, a sort of coach/big brother/guide, in a fellowship for people with alcoholism and drug addiction. I learned later, in rehab, that there are many fellowshipssome free, some not, most with organized meetingswhere people go for help with addictions like mine. The one Jack belongs to is the one I join.

Dave pulls up in front of an old ivy-covered apartment building on Charles Street between Bleecker and West 4th. I step onto the sidewalk and wait while he makes a phone call from the front seat. Its quiet. The air is humid and the streets are speckled with afternoon light. A young, high-cheekboned couple walk by, speaking what sounds like Russian into their cell phones. A fire engine wails. A trim young man with a Great Dane on a leash bends with a plastic bag in hand to scoop up a pile of the elegant dogs poop. New York, I think. Im back in New York. I see a middle-aged man walking alone with an earpiece connected to a wire that disappears into his tan windbreaker. He looks at me a beat too long and a little too seriously and an old familiar panic flashes in my chest. Dave comes around to the side of the jeep and grabs two bags from the back and barks, Cmon, I have to meet Susie. I rush to help, and when I turn to look for the tan- jacketed man, hes gone.

I follow Dave up three flights of exceedingly creaky stairs as he tells me how the old woman on the second floor, just below his studio, is highly sensitive, extremely cranky, and will call him day or night if she feels anything is awry. I wonder if this is his way of discouraging any funny business. A little barricade against what he and everyone else in my life fear will happen now that Ive returned to New York: relapse.

The apartment is a bright studio with a fireplace, high ceilings, and a small, dangling crystal chandelier. It looks like the study in a much larger, very nice old house. Daves books line the mantel and shelves, and there are old rugs scattered about. The small brown couch unfolds into a bed that Ill sleep on for the next few weeks. Dave rat-a-tat-tats a tour of the basicstowels, locks, a pile of blankets, tricky windows, cutlery, cups, coffee machine, keysand then hes gone. I had imagined having coffee with him at a nearby caf and a brotherly speech about how its all going to work outthat I have to be brave, that I can count on him, et ceterabut what he offers instead is help with the bags, another warning about the downstairs neighbor, a worried look, and a hurried good-bye.

The apartment looks onto a garden behind a town house. Its a minimalist oasis: boxwood, teak, reflecting pool. The town house has large clear panes of glass that frame exquisite mid-century modern furniture on the second floor, and a clean geometry of stainless steel, marble, and what looks like suede in the kitchen below. Order and wealth hum from the place and I can barely look. I close my eyes and only then do I hear the bright racket of songbirds. They sound exactly like the birds that covered the trees near the field where I walked on the grounds in rehab. I imagine a flock flying just above Daves jeep the whole way down from White Plains, descending now upon the branches outside to chirp and coo their encouragement.

Hi guys, I say and am startled by the sound of my voice. Thanks for the welcome home party, I whisper, and though Im embarrassed by the fantasy of the birds escorting me back to New York, Im still glad for any kindnessmade up, evencoming from the greenery outside. I lie down on the couch and listen.

The birds carry on. Voices drift in from outside. The refrigerator hums in the little kitchen. And all at once it hits me: Im alone. No one besides Dave knows exactly where I am. I could be doing anything. Ive been in-patient for weeks, under the thumb of nurses and doctors and counselors the entire time. No more morning gatherings, group meals, and in-bed-by-ten room checks. Im alone and unaccountable. And then, like a dead ember blown to life, I think about my old dealers, Rico and Happy. I remember how I owe each of them a thousand dollars and wonderdespite all thats been lost, everyone hurt, despite everythinghow Im going to get two grand to pay these guys off so I can buy more. I start to puzzle through credit cards and PIN codes for cash advances. Suddenly a few thousand dollars seems within reach and I can feel that old burn, that hibernating want, come awake. I imagine the relief that first hit will deliver and Im suddenly up off the couch and pacing.