Chapter 14: Chapter 13

Sisu, thought Neea.

Sisu was what she needed. That's would get her through this situation. The word doesn't have an equivalent in English, but it is important to the people of Finland and a large part of their culture. You could describe it as the Finnish spirit, or the toughness of the people. Maybe it came from having to endure long, frigid winters, or perhaps from being next-door neighbours to the imposing giant bear of Russia; either way it means that Finns pride themselves on overcoming obstacles and persevering against the odds. That's where Neea was in her struggle to help Darwin get healthy: against the odds. It was going to be difficult, but she'd dealt with worse in the past, and she would persevere like a Finn. Sisu.

On average it takes two to three weeks to withdraw from meth addiction, according to her research, depending on how long the user has been addicted and how much of the drug they've been taking. If what Darwin said was true—that she really wasn't a hardcore user—then her withdrawal would be on the shorter side. Many factors could help, of course, including a good, healthy diet, plenty of rest and, most importantly, avoiding places, people and situations that might trigger a craving and possible relapse.

This was doable. Darwin was refusing to go to a rehab clinic for now but if the withdrawal symptoms worsened, she might change her mind. Either way it would be good for Darwin to see a doctor as soon as possible. Surely she'd agree to that. The earliest appointment Neea could get with Dr. Rao was a few days away. Until then, she'd get some books from the library and do as much reading on the subject as she could. If Darwin didn't want to go to the library with her, then Neea would need Teddy or Traci to stay in the house with Darwin. Her friend Traci had offered to help, so perhaps it was a good time to take her up on that.

On the laptop she started a list:

1. Call Traci

2. Go to library for books on recovery

3. Take Darwin to Dr. Rao

4. Speak to Darwin's parents (if she doesn't mind)

5. Cook healthy meals (get her to help)

6. Keep healthy snacks in the house

7. Get Darwin a sketchbook/journal

8. Sauna!

9. Find more ways to keep Darwin busy (yoga?)

10. Get Teddy involved in Darwin's recovery

Ten items—good length for a list, she thought. She hoped the library books would give her some ideas and methods for helping Darwin. Neea got out her phone and called Traci.

• • • •

God I hate this part.

I'm lying in bed in the basement at Neea's and Teddy's, shivering cold, hugging that ugly dog pillow. I'm pretty sure Neea cranked the heat for me, and I'm under a heap of blankets plus a duvet and yet I'm still freezing. I'm freezing from the inside out; mad chills that have me shaking in my own little personal earthquake.

Water...

Glass is empty and my mouth is so dry it feels like it's glued shut. I shake the glass and manage to pour two drops of water down my throat. That'll have to do cuz there's no way I'm getting out of bed for more. Moving makes my head feel like it's splitting in two.

Neea hasn't been down here for seems like hours. Why doesn't she come down and fill up my glass? My stomach muscles start doing this weird, involuntary wave thing. Is that just extreme shivers or am I about to heave? God...

This whole ordeal is so much worse because I know exactly how to make it all go away. It doesn't even have to involve Kodi, which is what I've been most afraid of. I know where Switch's place is and I could walk there in less than half an hour. Plus it's not like he's even the only source around. Basically, it would take no time at all to get hooked up.

It's been three days, but it feels like months. I miss feeling good. Right now I miss feeling even just average, but really, I miss the crazy heights, the super-powers that come from getting jacked right up on meth. I want that.

The earthquake gets a little worse as a chill goes right through me. I hug myself into a tighter ball but it doesn't help much.

"How are you feeling?" Neea says, coming into the room with a glass of water.

"Not great," I say, after swallowing a big gulp. "Chills and headache."

"I know something that might help!" she says cheerfully.

So do I, I think to myself.

• • • •

It was all about Darwin this week, which was why Teddy was eager to get out of the house. No point in trying Jello cuz he was out with Caylie, that girl from Safi's. It was their first date and they were going to a coffee shop downtown to no doubt sit by a rain-dappled window where Jell would act all suave and pretend to actually like coffee.

Byron texted back that he was over at Katie's helping her with a school project. Teddy should probably be doing school work too but he didn't feel like it. He didn't feel like doing anything. As he put on his rain jacket and the runners that he now hated for not being the runners he really wanted, Neea came downstairs in her bathrobe.

"Sauna time?" Teddy said.

"Yes! I'm going to introduce Darwin to a Finnish sauna. She'll be better in no time!" said Neea, then looking at Teddy's jacket, added, "Are you going out? Shouldn't you bring an umbrella?"

"No, I'm good," said Teddy with a shrug.

He walked quickly, hunched slightly forward, hands jammed deep in his jacket pockets, listening to the drops of rain plopping onto his hood. He was angry, but not really angry at his mother. He couldn't be mad at her for wanting to help someone, but this situation made him so uncomfortable he was just angry at everything that had happened to lead up to this. Why had his mom hit Darwin with the car? Why did Darwin step off the curb right in front of them? Why was he so obsessed with those stupid shoes that he made his mother drive in the torrential rain to try and find them? Why did his mother have to play the saint and go too far to try to save a messed-up drug addict? Neea always wanted to fix what was wrong with the world—it was just who she was—but did she think at all about how it might affect him? This was a difficult time in his life. Starting college would be a tough transition at the best of times, but it was a total nightmare when there was a meth-head living in their basement! What if he failed his first year because of Darwin? What if he got frustrated and quit? Did Neea want him to end up on the streets too?

• • • •

It was a sauna. That's what she thought would help. Apparently Finnish people think that sitting in a little wooden room and cooking yourself is the answer to every problem. I've been in a sauna before—maybe not an authentic Finnish one but a sauna anyway—and it didn't help anything. Just felt hot and weird. Does she think my chills are from being cold? I've been under a duvet for the last few hours. The chills are from the frozen black hole that lies at the deepest core of my being. Or maybe the drugs. Probably the drugs.

"In Finland we always take sauna without clothes," she said. "To us it's normal, but I understand if you aren't comfortable with that. We aren't in Finland so we can wrap towels around ourselves. Teddy isn't comfortable having a nude sauna either, at least not since he was a boy. Not with his mother!"

She laughed at the fact that her adult son doesn't want to strip down with her. I wasn't really interested in stripping down with her either so I said I'd be fine just staying in bed. She was convinced the goddamn sauna was going to instantly cure me or something because when I resisted she started to get kind of pushy, but still in a super-nice way.

That's when I told her to fuck off.

Yeah, I did. That was mean and, really, I don't know where it came from but I guess a combination of the headache, the chills, the drug craving, the weirdness of being in this house and this woman's incessant niceness. It just came out. And once out, I was fine to let it echo around the room in the deathly silence that followed. Her face was a theatrical mask of surprise and hurt. Finally, quietly, she said okay and went into the sauna on her own.

Wow. It's so unusual that you tell someone to fuck off and they actually just fuck off. I felt powerful... and really sad.

• • • •

He was walking along Dallas Road near where it meets Oswego Street. He thought about that girl, C. J., from the Robotics Club. She lived on Oswego. He didn't know where exactly but Oswego was only six or seven blocks long. He turned right.

Not only didn't he know which house was hers, he had no idea if she was here or over at her mother's place near UVic this week. Wherever she was, he ended up walking the whole length of Oswego without seeing any sign of her. Oswego ended at the harbour. He turned right and walked along Belleville past the ferry terminal, past the Legislature and the Royal BC Museum. On a summer day this part of town would be packed with tourists from all over the world, taking pictures of the perfectly picturesque harbour, the street lights with their huge flower baskets, the horse-drawn carriages that made their way around the most touristy parts of downtown. Right now the streets were grey, wet and nearly deserted.

He sat down on a bench in the park next to the museum and looked up at the totem poles. They were carved by Indigenous people from different parts of the province. They were wet with rain. So was the bench, but he didn't care because his jeans were already soaked. The totem poles were positioned the same way so all the carved faces—people and animals—looked in the same direction, out over the bus station and up Douglas Street toward the grey and darkening sky to the northeast. It wasn't even five o'clock yet and it was getting dark.

Teddy remembered something that Neea had told him many times. It was a lesson from her father about clearing your mind so you can cut through all the noise and confusion in your brain and understand something better. Ukki, Teddy calls him. It's a Finnish word for grandfather. Ukki's way of clearing his mind was ice-fishing. Like many Finns, he would go out in the early spring onto the ice with an ice-drill, a thermos full of hot coffee, a folding stool and a rod, and cut a hole in the ice. He'd drop his line through the hole and sit and wait for a fish to bite, sometimes for hours.

All alone on a frozen Finnish lake, you can really get lost in thought. And all the unimportant thoughts, the trivial details of everyday life that always distract you, like all the fish that flit around your line but don't bite, they eventually swim away until the one fish, that one important thought that has been out of reach, takes the hook. Teddy closed his eyes and tried to picture himself on a frozen Finnish lake in the cold light of an early-spring afternoon.

His phone was ringing. It was his mother. He didn't answer.

• • • •

"Did he have an umbrella at least?" Traci asks me.

"Dunno," I say. "Didn't see him leave."

I can hear her moving umbrellas in the metal umbrella holder thing in the front closet. Traci's kind of awkward, so nothing she does is subtle. Sounds like she's ransacking the closet. "How many umbrellas are there normally?" she asks.

"How the hell should I know?"

"Never mind," she says coming back into the kitchen. "Just thought you might."

She's just standing there, looking out at the rain which is coming down pretty good now. Traci is here because Neea had to go out. To the library, apparently. I don't know why someone needs to make an emergency run to the library, but I suspect it has to do with me. Maybe looking for a book on how to make someone take a sauna, or the most constructive response when you're told to fuck off. I don't know and I don't care.

"He'll be soaked, even if he has a rain jacket on," she says, still on the umbrella thing.

"He'll live," I say.

She takes the seat across the table from me. I'm drawing away with a pen on a piece of paper. Stick people, of course. It isn't the same as drawing on my shoes, but it's better than nothing. There are a few stick dudes each standing on another one's shoulders. I started at the top and I keep adding more guys below, each one getting more and more crushed by the weight of the guys above. I'm doing this not because I'm filled with creative inspiration but in order to A, try and remember what it felt like all those times I doodled when I was joyfully spun on meth and B, appear busy so that Traci doesn't talk to me. It isn't working for either one.

"He's just acting out," she says. "He's at the age where he really wants to be the alpha dog and he sees you as a threat."

"Uh, I don't think that's it," I say.

"Sure it is," she says. "You're a challenge to his alpha dog status. It's not unusual with..."

"Oh my god!" I say loudly. "Do you really have to put everything into dog terms?" Right now, her dog obsession is really pissing me off.

"Hey, there are a lot of similarit..."

"Humans and dogs," I say angrily. "Very different! Most humans don't sniff each other's asses when they meet, you know? That would be considered pretty goddamn rude in fact! Did you ever think that you might need to spend less time thinking about dogs and more time getting a fucking life?"

Traci's just staring at me. I'm feeling fed up with everything, and I'm more than happy to unload on her, whether she deserves it or not. Stupid alpha dog bullshit...

I think I was really hoping to piss her off but now, like Neea earlier, she just looks sad. Where's the fun in that?

"I know," she says. "It's the drugs wearing off, right? Neea told me..."

"Just be quiet, please," I say.

We hear the front door open but it isn't Teddy coming back. Neea calls out a cheerful hello. She comes into the kitchen and puts an armload of books on the counter then goes back into the hall to put away her coat and boots. I can see from here that the books are all about meth and drug addiction, addiction recovery, etc. Just perfect: the one way to piss me off even more than Traci's crap. I lose it.

"How many times do I fucking have to say that I'm not addicted for it to register with you, huh?" I start in as Neea comes back into the kitchen. "Jesus, I only took the shit for a few months. I told you that fifty times!"

"They're just in case..." Neea starts to say but I'm not finished yet. I get up from the table.

"I'm not an addict! I'm totally fine, for fuck's sake! Why can't you get that into your head?!"

I was intending to emphasize that last part by sweeping the stack of books off the counter but they're heavier than they look so I only manage to push them a bit. I try again and, this time, knock the top two onto the floor. "Fuck!" I yell and stomp out of the kitchen. In the front hall I come face-to-face with a dripping wet Teddy who just came in the front door while I was ranting. He's standing there looking kind of horrified, probably wishing he hadn't come home. I turn away without a word and go downstairs, feeling pretty stupid but way too mad to apologize to anyone.

• • • •

Teddy didn't want to talk to his mother. That kind of craziness was exactly what he was expecting. It was like having a wild animal in the house. Did Neea think she'd be able to keep Darwin under control? How's that working out for you, Mom? He went up to his room.

Over the next few days Darwin would continue to freak out at the smallest things. Neea would try her best to calm her down but it was just impossible to know what might set her off. Fortunately, she slept most of the time. But instead of sitting in his room waiting to hear the next screaming fit from downstairs, Teddy got the hell out as often as he could. Byron's or Jello's or Safi's or just long, boring walks downtown or along the waterfront.

One night he sat at a table at Safi's with Uncle Joe. Jello and Byron were busy with their girlfriends and it was a slow night for delivering pizzas. Joe was sympathetic and told Teddy things would get better, just like his mother said.

"Your mom is doing a really great thing," he said. "And so are you, by supporting her."

"Except I'm not supporting her. I think it's stupid."

"You're still supporting her, even if you don't like the situation. You haven't run away to your dad's place, or told your mom that she should throw Darwin out onto the street. You maybe let her know you don't like it, but you also haven't stopped it. So, in that way, you're supporting her."

Teddy didn't say anything, just sipped his iced tea.

"When this is all over," Joe continued, "you'll be glad your mom did it. You'll be proud of her. She's a pretty special lady, ya know."

Teddy dismissed his comment with a short laugh and shake of his head. Besides Teddy, there were only two customers in the restaurant: a middle-aged couple who weren't saying much to each other, but were holding hands across the table as they shared a pizza and a pitcher of beer. They sat near the window and the neon "Safi's Pizza" sign bathed them in pink and purple light. Over the speakers came Safi's usual pop and R&B hits and as the rain fell outside a woman was singing, telling a guy that he can stand under her "umbrella, ella, ella." If that had some other meaning it was lost on Teddy but it sounded like a perfect song for Victoria.

Teddy and Joe both noticed Safi looking over with an impatient expression, a red delivery bag with a stack of pizza boxes inside on the counter next to him. Joe said bye to Teddy, grabbed the bag and was out the door.

As Teddy stared blankly out the front window watching Joe's little blue Toyota pull away, Bash walked past him carrying an empty beer keg. "Where your buddies at tonight?" he said.

Teddy shrugged. "I dunno. Busy."

Bash laughed. "Busy with girls?"

Teddy nodded. "Yeah, busy with girls."

Bash laughed again. "Why aren't you busy with a girl, huh?"

"And miss out on all this?" said Teddy.

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— D.B.