Grace

“When they asked why I pissed in my neighbor’s gas tank in a blackout, I said I didn’t know. The Judge threw the book at me. But you all laughed. I knew I found my people.”

Here he is again.

How tiring it is to always make promises to yourself. Over and over, the wheels of the train continue to turn and the promises are thrown into the furnace like coal, powering the machine of self-hatred that he has become.

But he didn’t drink today.

And he’s here, at a meeting.

Maybe there is hope for this soul yet.

Overly bright lighting and hate crime-flavored coffee full of complimentary grinds. A lean man with a weak beard and weaker jawline who looked like he should be a troop leader at a Boy Scout smiled as everyone showered him in laughter. Rob looked back down at the steam rising from his little styrofoam cup. They always kept the coffee on, which led to that burnt taste that almost offset the acidity of whatever bargain bullshit the donation basket afforded.

“And the best hour of our week has ended.” The chairperson reads from a little sheet of paper. We ask you all to remember our twelfth tradition, anonymity is the foundation of all of our principles ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.”

Anonymity. This may be one of the main hooks that the program has in Rob. Here, he isn’t the guy who stole one from Cecil Farthington or immediately tithed his championship belt to the Five Star Father. Seated on a metal folding chair not unlike the kind he used to defeat Hessian, in a moldy church basement in Seattle, Rob is just a man among men. They don’t know that he, and Anna, of course, are just inches from winning the Tag Tournament and potentially grasping some small shred of infamy within PRIME. No one knows he’s a huge piece of shit that exposed Don Winters’ past, tried to hang himself a mere month ago, and tried to take advantage of the one person who’s been good to him.

Despite all he is and all he’s done, the swollen shut eye and bandaged broken nose, and the missing teeth - here he is just Rob, a garden variety alcoholic who is no better or no worse than anyone else in this room. They love him and accept him, even when he cannot afford himself the same.

Maybe even more.

“Any burning desires?” The chairperson reads, asking if anyone has a secret they’ve held throughout the of the meeting. Something that eats their lunch. John Gordon always told Rob it was his secrets that kept him sick.

He rubs his head. These days it’s more than the secrets keeping him sick. One of these things, though, he can do something about. He wants to raise his arm. He wants to unburden himself of the shackles of misery tied to him from all of the muck and shit and filth that he has done. Every bone and all of the hearts that he’s found in his hands, methodically pulling and wrenching at them to see how far they can bend, just to act surprised every time he gets the same result of them snapping in his fingers. Suddenly he feels like he’s weighted, in the ocean, watching the light disappear as he sinks further away.

“Alright, for those who wish to join us, we will close with the Lord’s Prayer and the Serenity Prayer.”

Rob shoots up from his seat, trying to disrupt the meeting, but the group rises with him, his action looked upon as an overly enthusiastic newcomer to the crowd. They probably think he’s just itching to get outside and smoke a cigarette. He will hold his neighbor's hands on the left and right, touching some semblance of being a part of humanity while crying through the Lord’s Prayer until their embrace breaks and he’s once again alone with his sickness and his secrets.

“If you wrote a book, it would be called a day late and a dollar short.” The Father hisses in his ear.

“Amen.”

Normally he would be in the wind, letting go of the people’s hands before the amen. While the monkey on his back usually waits at the door for the sharing portion of the meeting, it’s too painful to bear once the prayer is done. Everyone talks and laughs with that fucking light in their eyes after the meeting and he just cannot seem to get through the barrier that keeps him from joining the human race, like he’s living behind a plate glass window. How miraculous it is how it goes from some fraction of feeling human to feeling like an alien so quickly.

Rob turns to leave, but the Father’s voice stops him in his tracks, “One bite at a time. They can’t kill you, Robert. And even if they could, they can’t eat you.”

“But what if it’s exactly like I think it will be? What if… what if they tell me I can’t come back? Or they laugh at me or shun me.”

He doesn’t know if others hear him talking to the Father or not. At this point, he doesn’t care.

“And what if it’s nothing like what you think? Are you not tired of carrying this weight alone?” the Father responds.

Every hair on his body stands at attention, and his skin feels as if the very air in the room is sandpaper. The basement is suddenly a fire and he is a pig on the spit, dizzily spinning in an agonizing dance. The lights above and the droning chatter of the group fellowshipping around him overwhelm his senses to the point that he feels bile kicking up in the bottom of his throat… but he stays. He wants something different and he is willing to make just this tiny little sacrifice to open the door of hope that maybe, just maybe, there is a better way.

A hand touches his shoulder and Instinctively, Rob’s body flinches - fight or flight kicks in. The door is a mere twenty steps away. There are little pockets of alcoholics fellowshipping between him and the door, but he’s a bull with his balls strapped to his stomach and there isn’t a motherfucker in this room that could hold on for eight seconds. A soft, sweet voice cuts through it all.

“You look like you need a hug.”

He turns to see an elderly woman, her beauty only accentuated by the wrinkles. She holds a ball of yarn in her arthritic fingers. They’re worn and bent from years of use, but they’ve been meticulously working on this yarn throughout the meeting.

Before Rob can protest she pulls him into her butter-soft cardigan, wrapping her bony and frail arms around him. She squeezes with an unexpected might and for a moment it pulls the wind from him. The harder Rob pulls away, the harder she squeezes him, like a python holding its prey. The woman keeps Rob locked in her vise grip until he gives in and accepts his fate.

He grits his teeth hard, trying to maintain, but it is a futile gesture. The floodgates open and in moments the hulking man is nasty crying with big, heaving sobs into this woman’s shoulder.

“Yeah, there you go, baby,” the woman says patting Rob on the back.

Sensing that the eye of the storm has passed, the woman pulls back while holding either of Rob’s shoulders, looking up at him with a big and imperfect smile. Her eyes are as green as the fields of Ireland and Rob finds a calming peace in them. He takes a big breath, his body still shuddering uncontrollably.

“I.. I’m dying,” Rob manages to blubber out.

She woman sucks in her cheek, measuring Rob’s broken and battered face.

“Oh honey, we all are. You haven’t been very kind to yourself, have you, young man?” She says, the smile returning to her face as she pulls Rob down to sit in the metal folding chair, holding his trembling hands in hers. “Life is tough for the ones like you, like us.”

Rob stifles laughter. “Like us? No offense, lady, but I’m the stuff that sits below whale shit on the ocean floor and you’re… knitting?”

The old woman pats his hand in a “bless your heart” fashion. “Crocheting. I’m not making fucking sweaters.”

They share a laugh and the woman pulls a small white and silver phoenix Amigurumi doll from the pocket of her cardigan. Thoughtfully staring at it a moment, she puts it in Rob’s hands.

“Do you know the story of the mason and the phoenix? Hm, well, strap yourself in it’s a good one. There was an old, ornery, and cruel blacksmith known throughout the land - for his works, sure, but mostly for how big of an asshole he was. His name was… what is your name, love?”

“Rob.”

“His name was Rob. I’ll try to shorten this as much as possible since we’re both running a bit short on time. His work is magnificent, so he is constantly bothered by those looking for a handout. No one appreciates him the way that he knows he should be. He even turns away his business partner when she asks him to mend the hearth in her home so her children may eat and her family can enjoy shared warmth. That night he has a nightmare that he’s surrounded by all of the things he’s refused to mend - hearths, tools, and even the hopes of those who came to him looking for generosity. They haunt him. He finally sees that his frustration, despair, and loneliness are of his design.”

This resonates with Rob. He is hanging on every word now as the elderly woman continues.

“Among the items is a beautiful phoenix. The Phoenix informs Rob that he is to be given one final chance, make things right, or forever live in the cold shadow of his ego. The next morning he hears his partner’s child has grown ill from the cold. Without haste, he takes to mending her hearth. He completes projects he left unfinished, takes on charity work, etcetera. Ultimately, he is softened by the tireless works of his own forge, finding acceptance and contentment in giving of himself to those around him.”

The woman closes Rob’s hands around the phoenix amigurumi.

“You are not dead yet, Rob. You may be a miserable bastard and you may be dying, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make some things right with the time you’ve got left,” she whispers in his ear.

They are so together, so alone in this moment that they may as well be freefalling in space together or somewhere at sea, the two of them huddled around their secret fire. This woman, this tiny grandmother, stares in Rob’s eyes and he is seen, witnessed. Her eyes accept him for the absolute fucking mess that he is and her without saying it, Rob knows she has been him - she has been a complete fucking mess and someone showed her mercy.

Rob runs his eye along one shoulder and then the other, wiping the tears away and brushing his hair across her hand. He’s not sure if it was to clear his face or make himself vulnerable to her physically with no sexual undertones. A novel concept for this guy.

“What if isn’t enough? What if they won’t give me that love and acceptance? I’ve done some terrible shit, lady. I could say I’m sorry..”

Anna. Don. Lem. John. Charlotte.

“First of all, you’re not sorry. You were wrong and like my daddy used to say there was one perfect man a long time ago and they crucified him.”

Rob sneaks a smirk. “Takes a lot less to get crucified these days, let me tell ya.”

“Listen, son, the price of admission begins with putting down the cat-o-tails you’re whipping yourself with. Hell, Jerry pissed in his neighbor’s gas tank. But Jerry also admitted he was wrong faced the consequences, and paid his debt. You measure a man by how he pays his debts.”

Rob’s head bobs up and down as he internally resigned to what he must do. The woman smiles in approval and gratitude. She is reminded ever so briefly of the moment that she brought her own wreckage into the rooms and another soul gave her the roadmap to escape the path of perdition.

“Thank you, uh..” Rob begins, realizing that he doesn’t know the name of this woman who has helped turn the rutters of his paradigm towards a proper sunset.

“Grace.”

The universe sure has a sense of humor,

“Thank you, Grace.”

“Go on,” she says as she playfully slaps his cheek, “go warm up your forge.”

Grace gives Rob one last hug, that of two people saved from the same perilous end by some type of divine intervention. With a smile she turns and makes her way to talk to others in the room as Rob collects himself to leave. He will never see Grace again as one of them will have taken their last breath before he ever can make it back to Seattle. However, the remaining days they spend on this spinning rock, they will often think of one another fondly, a smile crossing their face as they remember this late summer evening that they got to share this moment.