Totality
Aleina Grace Edwards I drove home from the Easter party with half a canned Aperol spritz in the cup holder. The sun was already dropping toward the ocean ahead of me, and I watched the clouds over the 10. They were huge and humid, like in Texas or Ohio. It was almost dark when I parked in front of my house and downloaded a sobriety app. It’s just called “Days.” By the time the eclipse came, it had been seven days since I’d had a drink. In Texas, where my family watched, they were in the path of totality—for four minutes, the world inverted. Day turned to night, and the sun became a black blot lit by a ring of fire. My dad sent photos of himself and friends at his ranch outside Austin. Men in chore jackets and ball caps leaning back in their Adirondacks, faces tipped up. Two buckets of champagne on ice sat on the picnic table. The sky was going dark, and a pitcher of orange juice glowed in the low light. I went to meetings two days in a row that first week. Wednesday was for double-winners: members of both Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon. It was women-only, in a Spanish-style church a mile from my house. There were handwritten signs on the doors saying we couldn’t use the bathrooms. We formed two rings with our auditorium chairs. The woman sitting in front of me had blue hair, a bike helmet, and a bunch of scallions wrapped in parchment paper under her chair. The speaker wore Chanel