Chancers by Susan Stellin

Author:Susan Stellin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-06-07T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

June 2010

Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

In June 2010, I sent Graham an email message with the subject line: Are you alive?

“That’s all I want to know,” I wrote. “Well, actually that isn’t all I want to know, but that would give me some peace of mind. Your phone isn’t accepting messages so even if you’re not going to call me how about just a reply with some sign of life?”

Years earlier, this type of appeal would usually prompt some response from Graham—a photograph with his blurry reflection in a window, a misspelled text I’d scrutinize to gauge if he sent it when he was high. But this time, weeks passed without an answer. The message on his phone said his number was no longer in service. His website was down, his portfolio of photos replaced by a cryptic error message.

He was on my mind because a friend had called to tell me about someone she knew who had died of a heroin overdose. With this seed planted, then watered over the course of many more conversations about her friend, I started to wonder if Graham had met a similar end.

News about someone’s death generally arrives on its own schedule, whether it’s long dreaded or a complete surprise, but I put off contacting anyone who might know what had happened to Graham because I thought I could control grief’s timing.

At first I was too overwhelmed with deadlines to face the prospect of mourning—or at least, that’s what I told myself. Then I had a trip planned to visit my family in Michigan, which I didn’t want to spend crying about Graham. But after I got back to Brooklyn I thought I was mentally prepared for the overdose I assumed had finally happened. I sent a delicately worded text to Anna, figuring she could at least tell me if Graham was alive.

She didn’t reply.

For weeks I debated whether this meant Graham was dead and she couldn’t face spreading that news, or she didn’t know where he was and wasn’t in the mood to type up a response. She and I hadn’t had any contact since I bailed Graham out of Rikers years earlier, but I began to worry that she might blame me for something I had—or hadn’t—done.

“There’s no way to know why she’s not answering,” my friend Alex told me. “Maybe this means you’re not ready to find out.”

More than anyone else in my life, Alex didn’t judge me for continuing to worry about Graham; she never told me I should just let it go. She bought me drinks, listened to stories about an ex she had never met, and offered guidance instead of the opinions most of us can’t resist doling out.

Her advice boiled down to a consistent theme: that we all have to learn how to live with uncertainty, because some things are simply out of our control. It wasn’t a particularly novel lesson, but for anyone dealing with an addict, it’s a difficult one to learn. Even if you

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