Free Dead Boyfriends by David Housewright Page B

right?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œYou’re my friend, aren’t you, McKenzie?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThat’s good, cuz a girl, she can’t have too many friends. But really, you gotta get some Vicks. You gonna get some?”
    â€œI will. I promise.”
    â€œMcKenzie?”
    â€œYes, Merodie?”
    â€œI did therapy today. I think I told you. It was so early. You wouldn’t believe how early. Up at six, shower at six fifteen, breakfast at seven. It’s like—I know it’s a jail but, my God. At seven thirty they bring me to this room, kinda like a classroom, you know, in school, and this woman was there, this chemical dependency counselor, a woman I’ve never seen before who was asking about my drinking problem. And I’m like, I don’t know this woman, so I tell her, ‘I don’t have a drinking problem,’ and she says, ‘You were in a house for two weeks with a dead man and didn’t even know it. That suggests you have a drinking problem,’ which I guess is true enough. But I didn’t kill him, McKenzie. I swear. I didn’t kill Eli. That’s what I told the counselor, and she justshakes her head and says, ‘That’s not my department,’ and I’m like, ‘What is your department?’ ”
    â€œMerodie—”
    â€œI know I have a problem, McKenzie. Okay? I’ve had this conversation before with other people. So many people. And I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried. I’ve tried so hard to get straight, but. . . I don’t know. I’m tryin’ to explain it all to this woman and she’s not listening, you know? Instead, she gives me this piece of chalk. I’m like, ‘What’s this?’ And she says, ‘Chalk.’ I can see that, okay? And the woman, she points at this large blackboard mounted on wheels and she tells me to write down my history. She wanted to see my history of alcohol abuse, when I started drinking, how much I drank, the people I met while drinking, the things I did while drinking, the things that happened to me while drinking. And I’m laughing. I’m like, ‘Got a few weeks?’ And the counselor said she did, and so I start writing.
    â€œAt first my letters are tall and wide and I fill a whole line with only a few words, but then the letters become smaller cuz I’m trying to squeeze it all in. The counselor told me not to worry about chronological order, just write it down as it came to me, and I did, starting with a party in junior high school when I drank my first beer and the kegger at the river where I got drunk for the first time. And I kept at it, going through half a box of chalk, filling one side of the board and then the other, writing until my hand hurt—and that wasn’t even half of it!
    â€œThe first time I had sex I was drunk. And the second time. And the third. And the fourth. I was drunk at the homecoming dance and at my junior prom and on the day I dropped out of high school. I was drunk when I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my collarbone. I was drunk when I drove my car into the fence that surrounded my mom’s house. I was drunk when the doctor told me I was pregnant. . .”
    Merodie began to weep. It should have been easy for me to say, “Hey, you brought it all on yourself.” I couldn’t manage it. Instead Ifound myself wishing I could reach through the phone and wrap my arms around her. That’s what friends are for, right?
    â€œMcKenzie, you gotta help me. You gotta help get me out of here.”
    â€œWe’re trying, Merodie.”
    â€œI hafta get outta here so I can make it all right. Make it right for Eli. I was drunk, McKenzie, drunk when that beautiful man bled to death in my living room. I coulda done somethin’ if I wasn’t drunk.”
    â€œDon’t say anything more, Merodie.”
    I had so many questions for her, but I was