I’d probably end up in a place like this someday. Except it’d be years down the road, and he’d have the opportunity to do a lot more harm to himself first. There’d be no ambiguity about whether he was a committed drunk.
Slowly he started walking again, his shoes scuffing on the utility carpet. Ahead of him, Pam disappeared around the corner, and Tierney’s heart ker-thunked once more. What if she never noticed he was missing, and he wandered around Dunthorpe forever? Alone and without the help he needed—whatever that was—as lost in this place as he’d been the last few years of his life.
His feet started moving faster, pushing him forward, because his head may not know whether this was a good idea, but his emotional self understood the plan: he was here to get his shit together. Just check it out for a few days, one of the inmates urged in a soothing voice. You can always bail later. Can’t hurt, right?
His brain might have thrown up another objection, but just then Pam poked half her body back around the corner. “Mr. Terrebonne? There you are. I was afraid I’d lost you for a second.” She smiled at him, a real smile.
Tierney bobbed his head. “Yeah, just got caught up in my thoughts for a second.”
He expected her to lead on, but she stood there, waiting until he came nearer. Close enough that she could clasp his forearm for a brief squeeze and say, “The next two or three weeks will be trying, but you’ll reap rewards you can’t imagine now in the long run.”
Tierney blinked at her, running that through his mental processes a couple of times before he cleared his throat and responded. “Thanks.”
She smiled again, then turned and took him to his room. He dumped his bags on the bed—it looked like a regular double bed, if a little on the frilly side, but somehow it made the place feel like a nursing home. It could be the striped and flowered wallpaper, or the extra-wide, fake-wood-grain doors to his private bathroom and the hallway. He nodded and occasionally murmured a reply as Pam told him to, “Settle in, look around the center, but don’t interrupt any sessions. If you have questions, Sandoval is at the information desk. Just turn right out your door and walk to the end of the hallway.”
Then she left, and Tierney began the depressing business of accepting that this place was his reality for a while. This room and endless therapy. He couldn’t be sure yet, but this “recovery” thing was shaping up to be the most harrowing thing he’d done in his life.
“It was my grandfather,” Tierney explained to his LGBT cohorts a week later, when it was his turn in the hot seat. The therapy group had Tierney pinned down, with little hope of escape from Drag Betty and all her fucking questions. He looked around the circle—it didn’t matter how fancy Dunthorpe was, they still had institutional rooms with office chairs for situations like this. At least the chairs were padded and the windows were plentiful and had good views of the very perfect lawns and gardens. “I stayed in the closet because of the old guy.”
“You said you hated him,” Betty poked at him verbally. “You spent twenty years hiding because he told you to?”
“He threatened to take away my family! And cut me off without a dime,” Tierney added, certain these people would understand—they all had to come from money to be able to afford this place, didn’t they? “I mean, the money is one thing, but my family . . .”
“Why’d you stay in the closet for them?” Gary, one of the senior members of the group, asked. “They don’t give a shit about you.”
“I never said that.” Not in so many words. He’d only used a couple of them. “They made me come here; they must give a shit.”
Drag Betty sniffed. “According to you, sweetheart, they sent you here to turn you back into their picture-perfect son. The one you were before.”
“And what about this guy you were in love with?” Gary chimed in again. “You said you were pretty sure he was into guys for a while before he came out. Didn’t you say months before? But you never approached him, in spite of waiting years for him.” Gary leaned forward, pointing at him when Tierney opened his mouth to object. “Those were your words, T. You waited years.”
He gave up facing them down and dropped his head into his hands, scrubbing at it. Thinking. “Okay, so . . .” he began, not that he knew where to go after this. Why did I do that? Wait years.
“You let your grandfather stop you,” Gary said, softly.
“I was fourteen!”
“What about later?” some voice he didn’t recognize asked. The newest member, Alicia. Only eighteen, but she had deep scar tissue marching up her arms in neat, parallel lines. Tierney hadn’t realized “cutting” was a thing until he met her last week. “When you were older. Aren’t you, like, in your thirties, now?”
“Okay, yes, but—”
“But you were scared,” Betty said.
“I thought this was a fucking support group.” Tierney stood, shoving shaking hands into the pockets of the new robe his mother had sent him. “Why’re you all attacking me?”
No one answered, not even Curt, the “facilitator.” He apparently facilitated emotional abuse. Tierney kicked his chair back with his foot and stepped outside the circle, heading for the door, anger boiling up inside him. He had to leave or he’d say shit and he was fucking tired of ruining his life by letting his mouth have control.
“Tierney,” Curt said.
Tierney stopped, waiting even though his blood was urging him to move. Hit someone or run away. Gallop through the halls in silk pajamas with his robe billowing out behind him, screaming insanely and generally living up to the assumption that he was crazy.
“Sometimes the best way to support someone is to make them face hard truths.” Curt’s words snuck up behind him, soft but hitting him with the force of a body slam. He swayed.
“I don’t wanna,” some small voice said. A kid voice.
“You’ve been here a week,” Betty said, and even her tone sounded almost supportive. “Maybe it’s time to try.”
He closed his eyes, fighting a battle inside himself. Some of the inmates were resisting, but others wanted to do it. Figure this shit out.
“It’s why you’re here,” Gary said. “Not even your family can make you stay, not without a court order. You’re going to have to face it sooner or later. Doing it now will be easier. We understand.”