Summary

Jamison opens Chapter Thirteen, "Reckoning" with Leslie renting a new studio after she and Dave move out of their apartment. This is the first time she has lived alone in three years. She finds the adjustment very difficult. The absence of alcohol during this breakup does not help. Jamison writes, "The absence of booze tingled like a ghost limb" (395). She can see the "specter of another life" everywhere, another version of the breakup in which she drank herself into a thoughtless stupor every night. Even though she knows she is not supposed to want that life, part of her desperately longs for it.

To distract herself, she starts chairing the 7:30 am meeting on Wednesdays. She loves that meeting. She finds the other members' voices a much-needed relief from her own thoughts and worries. There is a cute guy in a maroon tracksuit who looks...