What I Loved

up Erica's lipstick. My wife and her beloved characters in a dead man's books. Only fictions. But we all live there, I thought to myself, in the imaginary stories we tell ourselves about our lives, and then I picked up Matt's picture of Dave and Durango.
     
    Mark looked better. His blue eyes had a new directness, and he had gained a few pounds during his months away. Even his voice seemed to have more resonance and conviction. His days consisted of job hunting in the morning, Narcotics Anonymous meetings in the afternoon, and appointments with a man who had become his sponsor. Alvin was a former heroin addict who couldn't have been more than thirty. He was a tidy, polite man with light brown skin, a close-cropped beard, and eyes that burned with feverish determination. Alvin was a resurrected man, a Dostoyevskian character who had crawled up from the underground to lend his support to a comrade in need. His body was a rigid block of purpose, and just looking at him made me feel languid, superfluous, and ignorant Like thousands of others, Mark's sponsor had "hit bottom" and then decided to change his life. I never learned Alvin's story, but Mark told me and Violet countless others he had gathered up at Hazelden, sordid tales of desperate need that led to lies, abandonments, betrayals and sometimes violence. Each story had a name attached to it—Maria, John, Angel, Hans, Mariko, Deborah. Mark was clearly interested in the stories, but he focused on their grim details rather than on the people who had made them happen. Perhaps he saw their actions as mirrors of his own degradation.
    Violet was hopeful. Mark attended meetings every day, spoke to Alvin often, and was working as a busboy at a restaurant on Grand Street. Following the rules of the program, Violet had told him she was finished with punishments, but he couldn't live with her unless he was "clean." It was that simple. In the middle of the month, Mark knocked on my door one evening at around eleven o'clock at night. I was already in bed but still awake. When I opened the door, he was standing in the hallway. I told him to come in. He walked to the sofa but didn't sit down. He glanced at the painting of Violet, looked in my direction and then down at his shoes. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry for hurting you."
    I stared at him and tightened the sash of my bathrobe as if that tug would help keep in my emotions.
    "I was on drugs," he continued. "They messed me up, but I'm responsible for all of it."
    I didn't answer him.
    "You don't have to forgive me, but it's important that I ask you. It's part of the steps."
    I nodded.
    Mark's face was quivering.
    He's nineteen years old, I said to myself.
    "I wish everything was different, that it was the way it was before." He looked at me for the first time. "You used to like me," he said. "We had good talks."
    "I don't know what those talks really meant, Mark," I said. "You've lied so much ..."
    He interrupted me. "I know, but I've changed." There was a moan in his voice. "And I told you things I never told anybody else. I meant them. I really did."
    The desperation seemed to come from inside him, from deep within his chest. Was the sound new? Had I ever heard this tone before? I didn't think so. Very tentatively I put my hand on his shoulder. "Time will tell," I said. "You have a chance to turn things around, to live in a different way. I believe you can do it."
    He moved closer to me and looked down into my face. He seemed immensely relieved. He let out a long breath, and then he said, "Please." Mark spread his arms for a hug. I hesitated but then relented. He leaned toward me and lay his head on my shoulder and he embraced me with an intensity and warmth that reminded me of his father.
    Early in the morning on December 2, Mark disappeared. That same day Violet received a letter from Deborah—the girl Mark and Violet had befriended at Hazelden. It was almost midnight when Violet came downstairs with the letter in her hand, seated herself on the sofa and read it to me.
    Dear Violet,
    I wanted to write you and tell you that I'm doing all right. Every day is a big fight with the not drinking and everything but I'm getting along with my mom's help. She's trying not to yell at me so much after what we said in the family meetings. She knows it gets me down. When it's really bad I think about the singing I heard from the sky that night at Hazelden and those voices from heaven that told me I was a child of God and that he