It’s not like Lainie actually wanted to speak at this damn AA meeting. Her sponsor, Debbie twisted her arm, saying that giving back was how you kept it, whatever that meant. Her hands were shaking and her mouth was dry. She looked out at the sea of faces. Some she knew from her many failed attempts at sobriety and her many returns to the meeting rooms.

Some of the women in the audience had failed themselves. What she had in common with some of these women was failure; failure to properly navigate life’s trickier moments —e marriage, the parenting, the booze and, with the booze, trouble. e one that stood out the most was the endless inability to understand men, their seeming lack of interest in any real relationship depth. eir sense of belief tha