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friend, and go in search of the man I love:Bill, Bill, bartender Bill of the beautiful lank hair and many girlfriends. He loves my back, loves when I sit on the kitchen table drinking straight from the bottle. Bill’s not happy that I’m getting married, doesn’t like the idea of coming to visit me when my husband’s at sea. As if he has some moral commitment to marriage, as long as it isn’t to him. Bill’s not stopping me, not getting down on his knees.
    And in the bar tonight, Bill’s not even there. I feel the scraped emptiness of the place, cigarette wood, insect chatter, and see his friend, Zappa, named for his Frito Bandito mustache and hair, coffee sad eyes, lazy familiar. There’s nothing in my memory until morning when I see the white of a sheet, and Zappa picks up the cup my contacts float in, tosses it out the window, blue blue. I find only one lens in the grass, and have a difficult time driving. By the time I get home, Jason has woken up and is hiding on the porch. “I don’t trust you,” he says. I cry like a barbarian, an exile. I cry sensationally, a banshee. Jason drives my car to the bus station, and while I am wailing in the passenger seat, a customer from the health food store where I work is in the car beside me. He is so calm in the driver’s seat. It’s a glimpse of sanity. Startling and clear. In my car, I could be underwater. I could be drowning. I have no idea how to live in that sober world. For a few moments, while our cars are parallel, those worlds appear side by side. I want to be safe, housed in a quiet place where I can think. Jason is unmoved. He phones me from Jacksonville. “I talked to my chaplain. He says I should wait to get married. Until I’m not at sea. I’ll be back in six months. We can talk then.” The idea of the marriage dies. My parents blame Jason. They say he walked out on me. My wedding dress is a ghost in a closet of coats.
    I go back to the Dry Dock meeting. Sit in a chair. Try to stay for the full hour. My treatment counselor always hugs me at the meetings, an enveloping that feels like protection, as though forthe moments of her holding I’m safe. My sponsor is a large woman with blond hair and with many sponsees who are all drinking. I can go a day or two without a drink. Something still races through me like adrenaline. I can listen to the other staff person, the man with a brown mustache who smiles at me kindly. Jim. I tell him, “I’m afraid to speak, to stand up.” He asks me, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” I hadn’t really thought it out. I imagine walking up the aisle to the podium, opening my mouth to tell my story, and then what? My knees buckle. A sharp whiteness explodes, and it’s all I can see. I lose my traction on the floor, tilt, fall into the darkness at their feet. I can hear my treatment counselor say, “Well. Then, we’ll pick you up.”

Seven Works of Mercy
    In the spring of 1983, I’m taking classes at the university, majoring in English. My mom gives me money for my classes and books. My parents surprise me with a gift, a $200 electric typewriter to replace my old manual model. I’m grateful for their help but feel guilty for it too. In my creative writing class, a boy with a cloud of black hair writes a story in which the narrator walks across campus, ignored and lonely for what seems like years, until a girl with curly hair blinks black mascara-ed eyelashes at him. “An angel,” the narrator says. In class, we could turn in a “private” story, one that wouldn’t be workshopped, only seen by the teacher. But the teacher recognized my hair in the boy’s story and showed it to me. I hadn’t realized I wore so much mascara.
    In the story, the boy is seen by the girl, recognized in a way that makes him feel he can trust her, love her. I can be trusted, but not when I drink. It reminds me of police emptying meth labs of plastic cones and tubes, paraphernalia, and the men and women pulled out onto the