DOWN ON ALL FIVES DANIEL J. CLEARY BACHELOR OF ARTS IN ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON MAY 1995 MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON MAY 1997 DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN–MILWAUKEE MAY 2012 Submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN CREATIVE WRITING at the NORTHEAST OHIO MFA and CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY MAY 2015 We hereby approve this thesis For Daniel J. Cleary Candidate for the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree Department of English, the Northeast Ohio MFA Program and CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY’S College of Graduate Studies Professor Mohammad Imad Rahman Department, Date Professor Caryl Pagel Department, Date Professor Robert Pope Department, Date Student’s Date of Defense: March 31, 2015 DEDICATION To MBC: my heart and soul ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Special thanks to Imad Rahman for helping this rhetorician become a fiction writer, and to Caryl Pagel and Robert Pope for serving on my thesis committee. Also, a thank-you to all of the professors and writers in the NEOMFA program for helping me become a better writer and teacher of writing in all of its forms. iv DOWN ON ALL FIVES DANIEL J. CLEARY ABSTRACT Alcoholic and drug addict Linus Domanski checks into the Tom Fitzgerald Center, a halfway house and treatment center for indigent men, in order to avoid a four-year prison sentence for paralyzing a school crossing guard in a drunk-driving accident. Readers encounter important people from Linus’ past (e.g., an African American high school sweetheart, Linus’ mother and father, a girlfriend with whom he has an alternative sexual relationship) and people from his present at the Fitz (e.g., an Oberlin College graduate, an old drug-buddy from Linus’ youth, a street-tough gay man whose mother used to date Linus’ father). When Linus’ transgressive ways get him and a friend kicked out of the Fitz, and when they decide to try to control their drinking and using, Linus is set on a collision course that will end with him getting locked up, covered up, or sobered up—or some combination thereof. v Hold My Life I made it up the gravel driveway, past the rusty U-Haul, and through the chain- link gate. A leathery blonde woman in her fifties looked up from a picnic table and squinted at me. “Good morning,” she said in her pack-a-day voice. “Have you been drinking?” “Yes.” “Good.” Folks usually called the Tom Fitzgerald Center simply the Fitz, but it earned its other nickname, The Last Stop, for a couple of reasons. For one, it occupied the final property on a dead-end street of boarded-up houses with sunken porches and abandoned lots overgrown with crabgrass. It was in the Slavic Village neighborhood of Cleveland’s east side, with a pair of east- and westbound commercial railroad tracks directly in back. It was also the last place anyone wanted to be. I had no more tricks up my sleeve when I called the Fitz. The judge told me that I had two choices: stay sober or go to prison for four years. I couldn’t do it on my own. I’d tried. I’d go half a day and then the old squirrel cage in my head would start spinning, and the sweats and the shakes would start up. A couple stiff ones would fix that, and then I’d be off and running again. When I called the Fitz the week before I checked in, I told the woman I’d been averaging about a half-gallon of something eighty proof a day for the past two or three years. 1 “Have someone drop you off,” she said, “or take a cab. But we can’t pick up the fare. Whatever you do, don’t stop drinking till Monday, and don’t drive.” “No problem there,” I laughed, half loaded at noon. “I wrecked my car.” At the time I called the Fitz, I was actually doing alright. I wasn’t smoking rocks or shooting dope. But I needed a place to go. I wasn’t sure I could handle prison. I couldn’t imagine drying out behind bars, surrounded by animals who prey on weakness. Fuck that. The one day and night I’d spent in the Justice Center right after the accident was bad enough. On that thin rubber mattress, I flopped back and forth like a trout, sweating out the booze, feeling the start of the DT’s. Next morning, I had to hold my right arm steady with my left hand just to sign the bondsman’s paperwork. So I did as the lady on the phone said and stayed drunk until Monday morning, sleeping a little bit every now and then, knowing that the end was near, that pretty soon I’d have to stop drinking, at least for a few years. I caught a four-year sentence for felony drunk driving and vehicular assault, but the judge suspended my sentence on the condition that I stay at the Fitz for at least a year and stay clean and sober until I was off probation. It was my first drunk-driving bust, but I’d crippled a crossing guard when my Cutlass slid off the road in a rainstorm and ran over him. I told my lawyer that I’d been drinking that morning, but I wasn’t drunk. In fact, I was on my way to get more to finish the job when I hit that puddle. But I guess the state has a different definition of drunk than I do. My lawyer told me to keep my mouth shut and not to bother arguing that I was actually pretty sober. “A .16 BAC is less than a six-pack, for Christ’s sake!” I told him. 2 “That may be true,” he said. “The legal definition of intoxication is pretty strict in Ohio, but I don’t think it’s wise to brag about your tolerance. And it’s not a good idea to make light of what happened. If anything, it’ll make you look like an asshole.” So I kept my mouth shut and got a four-year suspended sentence. My plan was to check in to the Fitz for year, dry out, start eating again, start feeling a little better, and do my best to keep my nose clean until I was off probation. The Fitz had been rehabbing alkies and druggies since the seventies. Because they took no government money and offered no actual medical services, its employees didn’t have to notify cops, wives, or probation officers about its clients. The Fitz had a pile of money from its namesake, a big-shot local car dealer who had a very public drinking problem himself back in the day. With these funds and the contributions of its “graduates,” the Fitz offered guys like me—broke, uninsured, unattached—a place to learn how to live without picking up a drink or a drug. The place was built in the thirties or forties as a shelter for battered women, so it had an institutional quality about it: tile floors, tall ceilings, a large mess hall with a stage, an elevator that no longer worked. This tall, thin, sleave-tattooed guy we called Penitentiary Rich said the place reminded him of the old Mansfield Reformatory. “Just like The Castle,” he said. “They could’ve filmed Shawshank up in here.” The Fitz charged no fees to the men who came through its gate looking for help. When a man was able to go back to work, the Fitz asked for ten percent of his earnings while he was still a resident, whether he was bunking at the main halfway-house facility or staying in one of its three-quarter houses in the surrounding neighborhood. 3 “The only requirement for treatment is a desire to stay clean,” said the sign above the door. I was cursed with a good memory. I rarely ever blacked out. But my recollection of checking into the Fitz is a little bit foggy. My downstairs neighbor dropped me off. I was loaded, but not loaded enough to not be scared. I remember seeing Billy Halahan, the head honcho of the place, standing outside, chewing on a cigarette as I approached the main door. “Welcome to the Fitz-Carlton! We’ll take care of you.” Billy was almost bald, and he always wore this drab windbreaker that made him look like a part-time driving instructor, which he used to be. He grabbed my bag, put his arm around me, and marched me through the door into a small room with a metal desk facing a wall, a standing plastic fan, and two unmatching chairs behind the desk. I remember him explaining some of the house rules to me while quickly scanning my body for red flags. He held my wrists, turned my palms up, and surveyed my arms for track marks. “I can tell you don’t shoot dope—anymore. A guy will be here in a minute to take you to your bunk. Sit tight. Swallow this.” He poured two fingers of Old Grand- Dad’s into a water glass and handed it to me. “Guys like you, you’ll get one of these every four hours for the first few days. Then we’ll taper you down to a shot every eight hours. Within a week, you’ll be ready for your last shot. We call that the Freedom Shot. For many men, it’s the last drink they ever take.” 4 I wasn’t really a bourbon man, but I took the generous shot down in one gulp.