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  Praise for A Clean Heart

  “Set in 1991 in the early days of chemical dependency treatment, John Rosengren’s A Clean Heart follows the daily routine of Carter, a young counselor at a teen treatment facility. The book, which switches back and forth from Carter’s troubled childhood to present day, provides a wealth of details and insight into the daily life and struggles of both staff and residents at a typical treatment center of the time. [This is] a novel that will strike a chord with readers wrestling with substance abuse, the Catholic faith, or family trauma.”

  —Alison McGhee, author of Shadow Baby and Never Coming Back

  “With echoes of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Rosengren writes with great empathy for the misfits and outsiders of Six West (whose halls are stalked by the unforgettable Sister X). A Clean Heart grapples with life’s most difficult puzzles: how we navigate the tangled bonds of family and how we save ourselves, ultimately, by becoming vulnerable. A redemptive and affecting novel.”

  —Will McGrath, author of Everything Lost Is Found Again

  “A Clean Heart picks at the knot of addiction and recovery insistently and with a wholesomeness intriguingly at odds with its subject. I enjoyed this book.”

  —Thomas Beller, author of The Sleep-Over Artist

  “In his powerful new book, A Clean Heart, John Rosengren reminds us that the journey of body and soul is best taken with another, or others, that somehow tie their healing to our own. Set in a rehab center for teens, each level of recovery—or descent—is housed in a character. Whether client or employee, they are recognizable, flawed, [and] at times hilarious and lovable in their struggles. This is a book of lessons and offered insights, but never at the expense of a well-told and gripping story.”

  —Kevin Kling, author of The Dog Says How and Holiday Inn

  “In A Clean Heart, John Rosengren has created a wonderfully empathetic protagonist in Carter and a wonderfully complicated situation. After seven years in A.A., Carter finds himself being tested both by a new patient at the rehabilitation unit where he works and by his boss, the charismatic Sister Xavier. The result is a gripping and suspenseful novel about the dangerous art of helping.”

  —Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy

  “Rosengren’s A Clean Heart thrums with vibrant characters yearning to do the right thing, often at great personal costs to themselves. Witty and totally absorbing, here is a novel about helping those snared by drugs and alcohol see that they, too, are worthy of love. Along the way, the characters learn that painful memories and secrets are a type of drug in their own right—that the past is just as mind-altering and addictive as anything found in a syringe or shot glass. Both heartbreaking and heart-lifting, this is a narrative about coming clean that will haunt the imagination long after the last page has been read. Spellbinding, mesmerizing, and deeply human, this is fiction about the toxins and tonics that beat in all of our hearts.”

  —Patrick Hicks, author of The Commandant of Lubizec and Library of the Mind

  A

  Clean

  Heart

  A

  Clean

  Heart

  a novel

  John Rosengren

  Coral Gables

  Copyright © 2020 by John Rosengren

  Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.

  Cover Design, Layout & Design: Morgane Leoni

  Author Photo: © Scott Streble

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  Mango Publishing Group

  2850 S Douglas Road, 2nd Floor

  Coral Gables, FL 33134 USA

  [email protected]

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  A Clean Heart: A Novel

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication number: 2020933492

  ISBN: (print) 978-1-64250-192-6, (ebook) 978-1-64250-193-3

  BISAC category code FIC043000, FICTION / Coming of Age

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Pat Meyer, Jerry Stelli, Ralph Bruce, Rich Scanlon,

  Pat Bixler, and Audrey at Parkview West.

  Thanks for showing me the way.

  Something we were withholding made us weak

  until we found out that it was ourselves

  we were withholding from our land of living

  and forthwith found salvation in surrender.

  –Robert Frost

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Oscar sauntered down the hall, hips stiff, shoulders swaggering, hands cuffed behind his back. Contempt crusted his face. He looked neither left nor right at the calligraphy slogans framed on the walls: “First Things First,” “Live and Let Live,” “Easy Does It.” His eyes bored straight ahead, cleared his path. The other kids watched from their bedroom doorways in quiet awe, reverence almost. They shrank back when he passed. Even with his hands cuffed and a cop at his elbow, Oscar sauntered down the hallway with savage independence. His eyes fixed on the counselor waiting for him: Fuck you.

  Carter knew the look. The defiance, the determination. His mother, after a few drinks.

  Once inside the counselor’s office, Oscar’s granite-gray eyes alone sliced the silence. He would not speak. The tough ones usually didn’t. His glare dared Carter to try to make him.

  Oscar embodied defiance. More than the dirty brown hair shaken over his shoulders, more than the faded jean jacket with the Guns ‘N Roses patch emblazoned across the back, more than the torn black jeans—the spirit of his defiance was greater than the sum of these singular details. He looked like many of the kids who had sat in Carter’s office, but a violence smoldered in him that made the other kids seem like Gandhi in their noncooperation.

  Officer Patterson packed the handcuffs back into his belt. “I’ll wait outside.”

  “Thanks, Charlie.” Carter regarded Oscar. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

  Patterson shrugged. Carter noted the slight shake of his head on the way out and knew he was muttering to himself. Patterson was old school. He saw only the ones who didn’t make it.

  Oscar’s glare followed the cop out the door.

  Carter faced Oscar, now seated on the chrome-frame chair, the handcuffs gone, his hands poised unseen in his jean pockets. Carter was sure they were packed in fists. When he addressed Oscar, the punk clenched his jaw.

  “So, Rock Lake or this place, and you chose the lesser of two evils. Why?”

  Oscar fixed him with a look of scorn. What do you think, dumbfuck?

  Carter continued as though he had answered politely. “If you finish treatment, the judge might suspend your sentence. But you’ve got to finish treatment. We’re under no orders to keep you. It’s up to you whether you stay.”

  Oscar snorted. His street clothes clashed with the hospital decor. He belonged to the street—roaming alleys, preying upon car stereos, staking his territory with spray paint—instead of being boxed within the lime-green walls of Carter’s office.

  “Another thing,” Carter said. “There are no bars, no locks here. You can walk anytime. If you stay, it’s because you want to.”

  Oscar nodded sarcastically in agreement. He wasn’t buying the tough guy, this-is-the-way-it-is approach.

  “If you decide to stay, we’re here to help.”

  The gentle tone achieved no better effect. Oscar scoffed at Carter, taking in his slender build, blond curls, and thin nose. Wimp.

  Oscar’s eyes paced the room, surveyed its contents. The olive-drab metal file cabinet, a pedestal for the yellowed Mr. Coffee; the particleboard desk with the faux mahogany veneer; the ficus in the corner; the hanging ferns; the orange, closely cropped carpet—“a shag with a crew cut,” Carter joked. Oscar’s eyes did not break stride. The North Stars pennant, the Far Side 1991 calendar (still on February; Carter had not yet flipped it to March), the cluttered desk.

  “When I was seventeen, I sat in your chair and wanted out,” Carter said. “You know what made me stay?”

  Oscar gazed out the window. The university campus la
y across the river, a shadow through the falling snow.

  “I thought if I stayed long enough, they would teach me how to smoke pot without getting caught.”

  Oscar stared at the snowflakes swallowed by the icy black water six floors below.

  “Instead, they taught me I didn’t have to be a slave to drugs,” Carter continued. “I’ve been sober since. Seven years.”

  Oscar turned to him. Is this bullshit over yet?

  Self-disclosure wasn’t going to work, Carter realized. They were too different. On the surface at least. He sensed they were the same deep down. He could sniff the addict in this kid.

  The two sat for a moment locked in a silent showdown, Oscar smoldering, Carter pensive. He searched for a hidden door through Oscar’s defiance.

  “You hungry?”

  He didn’t flinch.

  Carter buzzed the nurses’ station. “Judy, I need a favor. Would you please bring me a sandwich, uh, roast beef and Swiss—” Carter raised his eyebrows at Oscar, who shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly. “And a pop.”

  “Carter, is this your idea of a joke?”

  “For the new admit.”

  “Mustard or mayonnaise?”

  Carter looked to Oscar.

  “Mustard,” he muttered.

  “And an extra slice of cheese,” Carter added.

  “Coming right up.”

  Carter wasn’t fooled. He knew Judy was still pissed that Sister Mary Xavier had asked Carter specifically to handle Oscar’s admission. Judy had already laid out all of the forms on the countertop waiting for Oscar’s arrival when he told her.

  “We don’t ask to do your work,” she had said. “Stay away from ours.”

  “Sister X asked me to do it. I didn’t volunteer. Believe me, I’ve got enough work of my own.”

  “Is that why you don’t do your charting?”

  “I’m behind because I get asked to do extra work.”

  “So stick to your own work if you can’t finish it. Patient admissions are a nurse’s responsibility.”

  “Come on. How hard can it be? Ask a few questions from a form.”

  That had been the wrong thing to say.

  “Fine. Do it. Have it your way. But if you don’t get it right, don’t expect me to fix it for you. After all, it’s only a few questions from a form.”

  “Judy, what I meant was—”

  She shoved the forms at him. “I’ll stay out of your way. Live and let live.”

  Thinking of Judy slapping mustard onto a slice of bread and chastising him under her breath, Carter wondered if he would have been better off making Oscar’s sandwich himself. He shuffled through the clutter of papers on his desk without finding what he wanted. Finally, his hand landed on a purple folder. He handed it to Oscar. “Inside you will find the scout rules and campfire songs. Memorize your cabin cheer.”

  Oscar didn’t smile, and he didn’t take the offered folder.

  Carter knew his jokes wouldn’t earn him a living, but he thought they might loosen up this kid. Instead, Oscar sat before him amused as stone.

  “Seriously, read this. It’ll tell you all about Six West: the daily schedule, the level system, consequences, privileges, et cetera.”

  Oscar scowled at the folder.

  “Don’t think of it as submission to someone else’s rules. Think of it more as a willingness to try someone else’s way that might work better than yours has—or hasn’t.”

  The fight came back into his eyes.

  “Give it a chance.”

  Oscar contemplated the folder, finally snatched it, and placed it under his thigh.

  The knock on the door startled them both. Judy smiled past Carter with a plastic tray in her hands: the sandwich on a plate, neatly sliced into quarters, decorated with potato chips and a pickle, accompanied by a glass of Sprite with ice and a straw. As a bonus, she had added a pudding snack. “Room service.”

  “Thanks, Judy. Meet Oscar.” Then, to him, “Judy is the head nurse on Six West.”

  Judy handed Oscar the tray. “Welcome.”

  He balanced the tray across his thighs and stuffed a full quarter of the sandwich into his mouth.

  “Whoa. Judy dropped everything to make that for you. I want you to thank her, or I’ll have her take it away.”

  “Oh, Carter, don’t be silly. The poor boy’s just hungry.”

  “Judy, please. Oscar?”

  “Thanks,” Oscar mumbled without looking up.

  “Don’t mention it,” Judy chimed on her way out.

  Carter resolved not to let her interfere with Oscar. The new admit gobbled chips while he chewed the last bite of his sandwich. Carter wondered if he had the munchies. Other kids had come over from Juvenile stoned, but Oscar didn’t have that distracted air. Carter figured he probably was simply reacting to real food after a week of jail slop. He had yet to meet a teenage boy who wasn’t perpetually hungry. The urine test would show whether Carter’s hunch was correct.

  “So, what’s it going to be?”

  Oscar dug into the pudding with the spoon. Carter noticed the stump below the knuckle of his right middle finger. It looked more like a scar than a birth defect.

  “Well?”

  Oscar raised his eyes slowly, pained. “What’s what going to be, dude?

  “You going to stay or not?”

  Oscar slammed the pudding down on the tray. “You ruin my fucking appetite.”

  “Does that mean you won’t be staying?”

  A tense moment passed before he finally shrugged.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “What the fuck you think it means?”

  Stay calm, Carter told himself. Just another angry kid. “Not sure. I don’t read shoulders.”

  “Then read my lips, fuckhead. I’ll stay.”

  Carter couldn’t help grinning to himself. Guess I walked into that one. But at least he committed. “Carter.”

  “What?”

  “Carter. That’s my name. Carter Kirchner. See, up on the wall.” He pointed to the Chemical Dependency Practitioner certificate in the cheap, black metal frame hanging on the wall. Oscar’s eyes didn’t budge. “That’s what you call me. Try it.”

  “Carter. Carter Kirchner,” he said in a mocking tone. Then added under his breath, “Faggot.”

  Carter let it pass. “You’ll get used to it. Let’s get down to business.” He pulled out one of the forms Judy had given him. He hated these forms, the endless piles of mundane paperwork, but sometimes they served as useful props, giving him an excuse to pry. “I need to get some background information. Full name?”

  “Peter F. Pan.”

  Carter looked up. Oscar glared back.

  “How do you spell your last name, Oscar?”

  He spoke in the tone that adults use with small children, “D. U. R. A. N.”

  That’s the way they got through much of the rest of the biographical data: Mother’s maiden name? “Eve.” The last time you saw your father? “The day he left home.” Which was? “The last time I saw him.” Oscar begrudgingly provided the most basic information. Until Carter asked, “How did you get arrested?”

  A wave of sadness flickered in his eyes. He quickly averted them, but not before Carter glimpsed it.

  Oscar pulled a pack of Marlboros from his jean jacket pocket, slid out a cigarette, tamped it against the meaty part of his palm, then clenched it between his lips. He didn’t take his flat eyes off Carter. He slipped a pack of matches from his pocket, pried one match loose, and closed the book, slowly turning it in his hand.

  “You can’t smoke in my office.”

  Oscar spread his hands apart in surprise. “I can’t?” He set the match against the book to strike it. “Watch me.”

  Carter hated this part, having to be the enforcer. “Part of the program. One of the rules. Without them, it wouldn’t work. We’ve all got to live by them.”

  He struck the match and raised it to his cigarette. “And if I don’t?”

  “You forfeit smoking privileges for a full day, twenty-four hours.”

  He shrugged his eyebrows, amused, and moved the lit match toward the tip of his cigarette.

  Carter snapped. “Don’t you understand? You’re here on a prayer. This is your last chance. You fuck up here, that’s it, you’re in jail, ten months minimum. You think you don’t like me telling you not to smoke, believe me, it’s a lot better than some fat fuck bending you over a toilet.”