8456893456983

sixty-five years or so since the Big Book’s original publication, no one had ever added a chapter called
“To Husbands.”
When Gemma T.—a thirtysomething whose only two emotional settings seemed to be Angry and
Profoundly Pissed Off—raised her hand on that particular night, Dan had expected a fem-lib tirade.
Instead she said, much more quietly than usual, “I need to share something. I’ve been holding onto it
ever since I was seventeen, and unless I let go, I’ll never be able to stay away from coke and wine.”
The group waited.
“I hit a man with my car when I was coming home drunk from a party,” Gemma said. “This was
back in Somerville. I left him lying by the side of the road. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive. I
still don’t. I waited for the cops to come and arrest me, but they never did. I got away with it.”
She had laughed at this the way people do when the joke’s an especially good one, then put her head
down on the table and burst into sobs so deep that they shook her rail-thin body. It had been Dan’s
first experience with how terrifying “honesty in all our affairs” could be when it was actually put into
practice. He thought, as he still did every so often, of how he had stripped Deenie’s wallet of cash, and
how the little boy had reached for the cocaine on the coffee table. He was a little in awe of Gemma,
but that much raw honesty wasn’t in him. If it came down to a choice between telling that story and
taking a drink . . .
I’d take the drink. No question.
2
Tonight the reading was “Gutter Bravado,” one of the stories from the section of the Big Book
cheerily titled “They Lost Nearly All.” The tale followed a pattern with which Dan had become
familiar: good family, church on Sundays, first drink, first binge, business success spoiled by booze,
escalating lies, first arrest, broken promises to reform, institutionalization, and the final happy
ending. All the stories in the Big Book had happy endings. That was part of its charm.
It was a cold night but overwarm inside, and Dan was edging into a doze when Doctor John raised
his hand and said, “I’ve been lying to my wife about something, and I don’t know how to stop.”
That woke Dan up. He liked DJ a lot.
It turned out that John’s wife had given him a watch for Christmas, quite an expensive one, and
when she had asked him a couple of nights ago why he wasn’t wearing it, John said he’d left it at the
office.
“Only it’s not there. I looked everywhere, and it’s just not. I do a lot of hospital rounds, and if I
have to change into scrubs, I use one of the lockers in the doctors’ lounge. There are combo locks, but
I hardly ever use them, because I don’t carry much cash and I don’t have anything else worth stealing.
Except for the watch, I guess. I can’t remember taking it off and leaving it in a locker—not at CNH
or over in Bridgton—but I think I must have. It’s not the expense. It just brings back a lot of the old
stuff from the days when I was drinking myself stupid every night and chipping speed the next
morning to get going.”
There were nodding heads at this, followed by similar stories of guilt-driven deceit. No one gave
advice; that was called “crosstalk,” and frowned on. They simply told their tales. John listened with
his head down and his hands clasped between his knees. After the basket was passed (“We are selfsupporting
through our own contributions”), he thanked everyone for their input. From the look of
him, Dan didn’t think said input had helped a whole hell of a lot.
After the Lord’s Prayer, Dan put away the leftover cookies and stacked the group’s tattered Big
Books in the cabinet marked FOR AA USE. A few people were still hanging around the butt-can