Four Months Today

By Zary Fekete

His text sound beeped, and he looked down at his phone. It was a message from his sponsor. There was a couple across town who had a donation for the Salvation Army. His sponsor asked if he had time. He did. These days he had plenty of time.

Nick considered his recovery to have officially begun four months ago in February, but, in reality, it probably started earlier. Probably on Christmas morning when his wife had asked him to run down to the apartment storage unit in the basement of their building for the Nerf guns that were hidden down there for the boys.

Nick had grabbed the keys and taken the steps in threes. He had about 5 minutes before his wife would get suspicious. He ran out the front door to the liquor store around the corner, the only one that was always open in Bloomington, even during the Minnesota winter. He bought a half liter of vodka and a half liter of Sprite. While walking back he chugged half the vodka in his right hand while emptying half of the Sprite from his left into the gutter next to the sidewalk. He stood in the front door to the building long enough to pour the rest of the vodka into the remaining Sprite. He stooped down and dropped the empty vodka bottle down the street drain. There. That would get him through the morning. This kind of behavior was standard operating procedure until a few weeks later when his wife found him passed out on the toilet, and he knew he couldn’t pretend to hide things anymore.

The downtown Minneapolis Salvation Army AA group met every Monday evening. Nick had learned a bit of the lingo since he began to attend in February. He started taking Antabuse, the preventative drug that would make him violently sick if he drank. He also began to meet with his sponsor, William, a British ex-pat in his 70s. It was William who texted him the address of the couple across town with a donation.

Nick grabbed the keys to the delivery van from the shared kitchen table in the dining room. The first two weeks at the Salvation Army were free, but then they wanted you to start doing something to earn your keep. First he washed dishes. He moved on to cleaning the bathrooms and doing laundry, and, once the leadership realized he was serious about his recovery, they gave him the keys to the delivery van and he started picking up donations.

Most donations were furniture items, things like old mattresses or bed springs. Sometimes it was clothes, knotted up in oversized plastic garbage bags. Once or twice a month someone had a stack of records they wanted to get rid of or a rack of used books. Nick brought them all back and logged them into the front store’s book. Then the stuff went on sale to bring in some additional income for the Salvation Army halfway house where he was living with the other guys.

His phone beeped again and a second text arrived from William. Apparently, this donation was going to be different. Nick was supposed to pick up some wall length mirrors and deliver them to a different address. He hopped into the van, threw the stick into reverse, and carefully backed out of the lot. Soon he was motoring past the used furniture lots on either side of the street. He waved to a couple of the guys on the street. Then he was on the freeway headed south.

The first few nights in the Salvation Army had been tough; William said they were for everyone. Nick’s body wasn’t used to sleeping without liquor and he stared up at the ceiling for the first week listening to the belches and farts of the other 50-odd guys he shared the dorm with. The sleepless nights had also given him plenty of time to think. He didn’t think about any of the cliched stuff like picturing his wife or boys alone without him. They were probably relieved he was gone. He figured they wanted him back but not halfway back. If he was going back this needed to work. That first week as he stared at the ceiling he thought about himself. He imagined the alcohol molecules draining out of his blood, floating out into the air around him, mingling with the other smells of the dorm. He started to work up an image of a steel door in his mind; the door he was slowly closing and locking. The door was going to stay closed this time. However long he needed to stay at the Salvation Army with his shoulder against the door before returning home…three months? Six? Over a year? He was going to do it.

The pickup location was in South Minneapolis. He had been to this general neighborhood on more than one occasion with the van. The houses there were nice. Not mansion-nice like in some of the outer suburbs, but definitely middle class-nice. He took the freeway exit after driving for about 10 minutes. Two turns later he was pulling up next to a well-kept yard. The lawn was small but very trim. The streets each had a neighborhood watch sign posted. “Our neighbors are watching…Zero tolerance for crime.”

He got out without locking the van doors and walked up to the front door.  The door opened before he could ring the bell. It was an older couple and they were all smiles. They invited Nick to follow them to the basement. He slipped out of his shoes and followed their stream of chatter to the downstairs stairway.

“We your first ones today?” the older man said.

“That’s it,” Nick said, with a grin. “Not going to give me any trouble, are you?”

The lady thought this was very funny and suddenly launched into a story about something that happened last summer with her and her sister. Nick let most of the story wash over him while he smiled.

“Yep, it takes all kinds,” he said when she was winding down. “So now, you’ve got some mirrors to get rid of?”

The older man gestured to the stairs, and Nick followed him down. The basement was unfinished but spotless with lots of good overhead lighting. The mirrors were stacked against a wall.

“There they are,” the man said. “We had been keeping them for our niece. She dances at the Children’s Theatre Company downtown…but turns out she didn’t need them. Where will you take them”

Nick said, “Someplace up North Minneapolis.”

When he mentioned North Minneapolis the couple both hummed and acted like he said something serious. The man helped Nick move the mirrors back up the stairs and out onto the street one by one. Nick could probably have managed two mirrors apiece if he was working alone, but he didn’t want the guy to feel like he was ungrateful for the offered help. That was one of the lessons from the big AA book that William had drilled into him for several week: Always deal in gratitude. People want to give, but they also like people who are grateful.

Nick thanked the couple and then sat in the van for a second with the engine idling. He checked his phone and another text from William had already arrived with the address for the drop off. A couple seconds later he was back on the highway, heading north this time. By the time he was entering North Minneapolis a thin drizzle had started. The yards he passed were bare and muddy. The drop off location was for an apartment building sandwiched between a shabby Arby’s and a concrete supply company. There was no place to park, so Nick turned the hazards on and inched the van into a tight squeeze by a fire hydrant.

He rang the buzzer at the front door and was surprised to hear a kid’s voice in the speaker. The speaker was crackly but he heard the kid say something about the 6th floor. Nick took three quick trips with the mirrors until he had them all stacked outside of the elevator. He re-parked the van a block away on a side street, beeping the doors locked and manually checking with his hand that they were locked and then jogged back to the apartment building. He carefully moved the mirrors into the elevator.

The elevator door shuddered closed and after a few deep creaks the entire unit began to shiver its way upward. As he rose he could smell different smells as each floor passed: curry, garlic, onions, saffron. The door opened on the sixth floor he smelled the high, acidic tang of cat urine.

The smell grew stronger as he exited the elevator. There was a bare lightbulb above him in the hallway, and no other lights. He used his phone to inspect the first few apartment numbers and found the door he was looking for. He knocked and waited.

A moment later the door opened and the owner of the young voice was standing in the doorway. Nick guessed that he was probably 12. The kid was all smiles and beckoned for Nick to follow him. Nick shouldered the first two mirrors and stepped into the apartment.

It was filthy. There was a tiny kitchen closet on the right, the sink clogged with dirty dishes and crawling with flies. The fridge door hung ajar, the lower hinge clearly broken, the smell coming from the kitchen was thick with rotting chicken and mold.

The rest of the apartment seemed to be all one room. Every inch of the floor looked covered with dirty laundry and crumpled magazines. Nick counted five cats, but there might have been more. There was an ancient couch on the left with wiry springs poking up from the cushions. A pillow carelessly teetering on the arm of the couch seemed to confirm that this the only room and that the couch was the only “bed”.

The kid was standing in the middle of the entire mess, still grinning his huge, bright smile.

Nick tried to return the smile, but the cat urine made him wince.

“This your place?” he finally managed to say.

The boy nodded.

“Well, then these guys are yours,” he said, patting one of the mirrors. “Where do you want them?”

“Over here.” The boy said. He quickly kicked a few socks out of the way and pointed at the back wall, across the way from the couch.

Nick carefully stepped across the crowded floor, standing the mirrors against the bare wall. He couldn’t wait to get out of the smell. His eyes had begun to water.

When he finished he looked back at the boy who was still smiling but was now admiring himself in the shiny surfaces of the mirrors.

“Where’s your mom?” Nick said.

“Arby’s. Working,” the boy said.

“Your dad?”

The boy looked up, “He’s at hospital again.”

Nick gave a nod. He turned to leave, but then stopped and looked at the boy again. He was standing in front of the mirrors, poised in a kind of ballet stance, admiring himself in the reflection.

Nick said, “Were these your idea?”

The boy nodded and did a quick pirouette turn in front of his reflection. “Mom said that if I practiced a lot that I might be able to get into some schools.” Then, lost in thought for a moment, the boy stopped moving and just stared at the wall of mirrors. “Wow,” he finally said, “It looks like such a big room now.”

Nick looked down at the floor, and put his hands on his hips. He looked at back at the door, agonizing for a moment. He looked back at the kid.

“You eaten yet?” he said.

“Breakfast,” the kid said.

“Hang on then,” Nick said. “I always get myself too much.”

He trotted out into the hall, ignoring the elevator, and took the service stairs in three. When he got to the ground floor he sprinted to the Arby’s. He ordered from a bored-looking teen…three roast beefs and 3 fresh hams. It was probably the least unhealthy thing on the menu. He shook his head as he paid, mentally kicking himself.

“Useless,” he thought.

He grabbed the bag from the counter and ran back to the building. When he got back upstairs the kid was still twirling and stretching in front of the mirrors.

“Here you go,” Nick said. The kid didn’t look at him, lost in his own reflection.

A moment later Nick was outside, walking back toward the van. He got in and sat there for a few moments without turning the ignition. Then he pulled out his phone, tapped his way to his wife’s number, and wrote: “Four months today. A few more to go. Can’t wait to see you guys.”

He hit send and then drove off.

Zaqary Fekete has worked as a teacher in Hungary, Moldova, Romania, China, and Cambodia. They currently live and work as a writer in Minnesota. They have previously been published in Goats Milk Mag, Shady Grove Literary, Journal of Expressive Writing, Ginosko Literary Journal, SIC Journal, Reflex Fiction, Potato Soup Journal, Cholla Needles, Rabid Oak, Every Day Fiction, and WINK. They enjoy reading, podcasts, and long, slow films.

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