Community Service

Community Service | Part Fourteen

Community Service | Part Fourteen

There's silence in my life.

After I attempted to not only convince my mother to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, but also Ross, both have been quiet; it's borderline ignorance, my mother either never home when I finish school or in her room doing God knows what and Ross studiously keeping his head down every time I pass him in chemistry class or in the hallways.

I try not to take it personally, the avoidance, although I can't help but feel a little anger that they seem to take their own conditions so lightly.

It feels like I've taken twenty steps back with both of them, and sitting in my room on a Friday night with my earphones in and my completed Brown application zooming through cyber-space and into the laps of admissions officers, I don't know what to do.

Eliza is on a date with the boy-in-the-corner, which means that I should probably at some point learn his actual name, and we haven't actually talked much recently, her focusing on her personal life and me focusing on mine.

Picking up a pink stack of Post-It Notes, I start doodling, just turning back and forth in my chair absent mindedly. A small piece of paper flutters to the ground with the movement, and I pause and bend down, picking it up between my fingers. It takes me a second to connect the dots, before I realize that it's the card Ross gave me the night of my mother's accident, his father's name and phone number printed neatly on the shiny paper.

Opening my laptop and tapping me fingers as I wait for it to reboot,, I pull up a new window and type in, Alcoholics Anonymous, running the mouse over several search results before pausing over an address and time. If my mother wasn't willing to go, maybe I could

Alcoholics Anonymous looks like a small affair from the outside, held inside a small white building with a wooden roof. The sign displays a simple AA design in navy blue, weathered and worn so that most of the lettering looked gray. Parking my car in the dimly lit parking lot, lit only by a singular light post next to the road, I take a second to just stare at the building and take a deep breath. I don't have a definitive plan, especially not if I'm asked to participate, considering the fact that it wasn't me who was the alcoholic.

When I enter the room, the atmosphere takes me by surprise; the room is cozy and bright, the walls covered in warm yellow paint that basks everything in a glow, and there's laughter and chatter in nearly every corner. There's a large circle of foldable chairs in the middle of the room, paired with several tables full of treats, ranging from cookies to slightly crushed chocolate muffins.

There's a sign in table near the door, and I pause to take a name tag. Tapping one of the pens on the edge of the fold out table, I hesitate before writing down my name. For tonight, I'll be Nora. Essentially anonymous.

It looks like I'm just in time for the eight o'clock meeting, as people finish their conversations and cookies and begin taking their seats.

Slipping in quietly with my eyes on the carpeted floor, I grab a seat closest to the door, giving the people around me a quick smile. There's people here who look like the stereotypical former alcoholics, bedraggled and gaunt, with a shadow of suffering in their eyes, but there's also several who look like soccer moms and businessmen. One's even wearing a baby blue suit with Ray-Bans sitting crookedly on his head, looking as if he belonged in a business meeting, not one for recovering alcoholics..

When Mike Alderman, Ross' dad, catches my eye across the circle, I flush bright red. I hadn't stopped to think what his presence would do, if he'd tell Ross that I had been to Alcoholics Anonymous class or if he'd badger me with questions about my mother, assuming that Ross had already told him all about her condition.