The Alcoholic's Daughter

by David Sherman

  “I’m not going to go nuts,” she said. “I promise.”

  “Annie, if you pull any of the usual shit, the constant contradiction, interrupting me when I speak, refusing to listen to anything I say, temper tantrums, hysterics, the usual punching and kicking, I’m getting on the next plane. I promise. I will not take any more shit from you.”

  “It’ll be great, we’ll have a great time, you’ll see,” she said. Annie was beaming, pumped. She hugged him. “I love you.”

  He hugged her back but he didn’t believe her for a minute.

  She remained calm for the entire 10 days. No hysteria, no fights. Discussion and compromise had reigned with only a whiff of anxiety. Sometimes he could see her biting her lip, doing her best to rein in the terror that came with the luggage.

  They had a good time, he indulged her cravings for wine and austerity, they ate pizza and salads, none of that expensive paella — “it’s expensive and we can’t eat all that. It’s going to go to waste” — and came back friends. The transformation was stunning. Suspicion remained but he was hopeful. They had worked together the way he had always hoped they could.

  “She’s fine for now,” the therapist told him. “But if she doesn’t get help, in another few months, she’ll fall apart again. She can only hold on for so long.”

  The clock was ticking. They had a few good months. She compromised, she listened, she was affectionate, she kept asking, “I’m getting better, right? It’s better, isn’t it? I love you. I want to make you happy.”

  This was an Annie he hadn’t known before. Somewhere, maybe she meant it. Or maybe it was lip service. Evan wanted to believe, he wanted to love her, to grow old with her. He wanted to believe the therapist’s prognosis was wrong. But, it would’ve taken the credulity of a religious zealot. He had lost the faith.

  “Yes, you’re better,” he’d say. “You’re great.” But it may as well have been a Latin liturgy he was mouthing in a grand stone Catholic church. “Body of Christ … body of Christ.”

  Two weeks before the rehearsal, he dropped the bombshell. There would be drums and an electric guitar and bass coming into the living room for a few hours in the middle of the afternoon.

  She immediately said no, it was knee jerk no, exactly as he expected. There was the expected litany of “I have too much work to do, it will make too much noise, it’s an office …”

  “You’re not getting it,” Evan said. “They’re coming. And we’re rehearsing. You can hide in the bedroom, go out for the afternoon, do whatever you have to do, but we’re rehearsing here. It’s my house and I’m playing with these great guys. This is about me. I’m playing my songs and we’re going to rehearse in my house. It’s like a dream for me. I’m doing it. That’s it.”

  Annie was screaming at him but Evan turned away and left. “Three o’clock two Wednesdays from today,” he said and closed the door and went for a walk as she continued to yell. “Screw accommodation,” he said, smiling, as he headed up the road for his new comfort food, fries and gravy in the back booth of the corner La Belle Province. Sometimes only fat and salt would do.

  He got a cheque for a book he had edited, one of many little jobs he had netted in his scurry to make a buck. He made a happy excursion to his favourite jewellery store to finally buy Annie a proper engagement ring; a peace offering. Yes, she had gone nuts a few days after the engagement party but still wore a shitty ring she had bought herself at a novelty shop. Now Evan figured it was time for a real ring. They were heading back to Spain to do the book and then down the aisle, which aisle he wasn’t sure, but that was the plan.

  He was excited at the thought of surprising her with it. He chose a 14-carat white gold ring, worth about $400. It wasn’t a diamond, but she didn’t like diamonds. It was just a simple white gold band.

  The only worry was Annie’s odd habit of returning almost everything he bought her. One year it was a winter coat she needed badly. She became apoplectic. “We can’t afford it, you can’t afford, I don’t need it!” She almost ran to the store the moment she opened the box. She did need it and he could afford it but returning gifts or telling him his gifts for others she cared about weren’t the right colour or the right style was almost automatic — she needed to choose everything.

  He came home happy though wary and dropped the ring in its box on the kitchen table on the anniversary of her marriage proposal and said: “I know you probably won’t like it, but here.” Not the most romantic of openings but he was gun shy. She opened up the box and said: “What is this? A nun’s ring? What is it made of? Tin? It’s a man’s ring. Where’d you get this?”

  Even prepped for Annie’s less than gracious acceptance of presents, this drew blood. He suddenly felt sick.

  “It’s gold,” he said. “From the jeweller.”

  “It’s ugly. Why would you buy me a ring?”

  “It’s an engagement ring. You’re wearing a piece of $35 shit. This is 14-carat gold.”

  “It’s not gold,” she said. “It’s tin.”

  “It’s white gold.”

  “Why would you pick me out a ring? Why can’t I pick out my own ring? Why are you trying to control me?”

  This went on for two days. For the first time in the long list of illustrious battles they had waged, he lost his appetite. He ate and puked. His nerves were shot.

  Annie decided the best thing was for them to go back to the jewellery store.

  “I’ll buy you a ring and exchange this one,” she said. “Then we’ll both have rings.”

  Sure, he said, but the air had gone out of the balloon. They went to the store and she picked out rings. He said “yes, dear.” He no longer gave a shit. To get a discount, she marched to the bank machine and retrieved a handful of cash as he waited in the store in a fog, stomach churning. How can buying the woman you love a ring be so fraught with craziness? For the first time in months he wanted to get stoned; his feelings were too intense to grapple with. What the fuck had just happened?

  “That’s just neurotic,” the therapist told him a few weeks later. He was still trying to figure out how his gift of gold had turned to rust. “You know what she did? She took the moment away from you and made it her moment. You might have been better off to tell her: ‘No, I don’t want a ring from you now and if you want to exchange the ring I bought you go ahead.’ But you didn’t have to accommodate that. She killed your pleasure and made it her own. Killed your generosity and made it her own.”

  Things got worse. The grant for the Spain book was finally approved after three years of working at it, fighting over it and waiting for it. But once it came in Annie decided she was too busy to plan for the trip, the interviews, the subject, the narrative. She started working on other things. This would be her first book in English, he would help with the writing and the idea was to sell it internationally and especially in the huge U.S. market, where no book of hers had ever penetrated. The prospect intimidated her. And when she was intimidated she procrastinated or simply avoided.

  “We have to talk about this,” he said. “We have the money, now we have to work on it.”

  “We’re just going to wing it, like cinema verité,” she said.

  “Annie, you can’t do cinema verité thousands of miles away from home on this kind of budget. We can only be there a month. We have to draw up plans.”

  “You’re interfering with my work, you’re trying to kill my career, I have to work on this!” She shifted onto the all-too-familiar tirade. “You have no right to tell me what to do.”

  “We’ve invested in three trips to Spain to research this, now you’re saying we’re going to wing it. We’ve spent $30,000. We have to plan.”

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” she yelled. “You’ve never written a book, you don’t know anything about it!”

  What she was working on instead was a project they had tried to float the year before without success. A series of Canadian-travel mini books but no distributor was interested and
they were turned down for a grant. But a publisher had called her from Vancouver saying he could float it, make it happen, and she abandoned everything they were doing and threw herself into the project. Suddenly they were awash in books about Gander and Flin Flon and the far north and the Bay of Fundy and Annie was on the phone with this guy six times a day and researching Canada’s lobster fleets and polar bears. She went into a manic phase where Spain was forgotten, and left to Evan.

  Annie was jettisoning their other project proposals — everything they were doing died on her desk — for the promise from a publisher in Vancouver she had never met. They fought constantly. No, her new friend in Vancouver didn’t have money for an advance but he was promising he could get money from a foundation and the government. Annie had seized upon a new saviour. The feminist had found another man she believed would protect her. She wouldn’t talk about Spain. Didn’t want to know about it.

  “You’re afraid, aren’t you?” he said during a truce. “The Spain book is a big one and there’s lots riding on it and you’re afraid to get going on it in case it fails.”

  “I think so. You always have these big ideas. Maybe ‘cause you’re a man you think big but it intimidates me. I think we should think big but what if we don’t pull it off? I’m used to doing my books in French, they sell a few copies here and a few in France and I do the radio interviews and the TV interviews and a few newspaper interviews but this is a whole different thing.”

  “Yeah, it is,” he said, putting his arm around her. She put her face against his chest. “That’s what we should be doing: aiming big.”

  “I know, I know. You do a play you want to get it on Broadway, you start singing and there you are performing on stage, you get a recording contract. I don’t know how you do it. Everything scares me.”

  He feared the worst as the fights escalated. She wouldn’t talk, she wouldn’t discuss, she wouldn’t help with the paperwork. What she did do was get loopy at any demand that she work on the Spain book.

  “You’re trying to destroy me,” she screamed at him. “You can’t tell me what to do. This is my work! And I’m going to do it my way!”

  He was again the enemy.

  “Do it your way, as always,” he screamed back. “But do it without me. I’ve had it. I’m done.”

  There had been weeks and weeks of hysterics and insults. He had been spending more and more time away from home, working in the mountains, avoiding her phone calls, simmering over what he saw was going to be a disaster. Every once in a while he got a dose of sanity by spending time with Patricia, they kept their clothes on but she was as much a balm as the hot tub and the highway. They exchanged horror stories of relationships past and present. Patricia reminded him there was sanity outside the portals of his life with Annie. Another voice to the growing chorus of “why are you with her?”

  He told Annie he wasn’t going to be going to Spain; he already heard her telling him paella was too expensive and was he going to finish his wine or could she have it?

  “I didn’t grow up with a Spanish-speaking nanny. I don’t speak the language. We have a fixer there who does. And I’m not into any more abuse, arguments, insanity. I’m done with insanity. We’ll get there and you’ll lose it. If I stay here I can make some money and keep my sanity. I have stories to write.”

  She left it at that. Her mind was on the new arrangement with her new best friend, the publisher in Vancouver. She was primping for a meeting with him. He was flying into Montreal and she was laying on the makeup, the lip gloss, the eye shadow. Evan was heading up to the country.

  “You want to come?” she said. “You should meet him.”

  “No,” Evan said. “This is your gig. I’m going to the country.”

  Few hours later, she phoned him, deflated, distraught, near tears. He was playing guitar, staring out at the pond across the way where a loon had settled. “He’s an asshole,” she said. “I can’t work for the creep. He can’t get any money. He was full of shit. When are you coming home?”

  She had lost the dream of the book series, she had lost her saviour.

  “I need you in Spain,” she said. “I need you. I won’t lose it. I promise.”

  “Annie, I can’t handle the shit anymore, I told you before the last trip. I can stay here and make a few bucks. You don’t need me.”

  “I won’t do that,” she said. “I promise. It worked out last time. We had a good trip. I need you to come. I won’t go nuts, I promise.”

  Didn’t he always need to be needed?

  He got on the plane for the long flight, the same trip they had made together three other times, sometimes entwined on the floor of the plane in a desperate attempt to sleep. An adventure of a lifetime, he had always said. Who else gets to crawl through almost every nook and cranny of Spain, Barcelona to Madrid, Grenada to the Costa del Sol and even maybe make a few bucks doing it? And Annie was true to her word. Kept her temper in check. For three nights. On the fourth night, she lost it. And it never returned.

  He tried to heal by suggesting a weekend away. Spain was now just another scar and bigger than the rest. A change of scene, he thought, like an ice pack, to soothe but Annie balked. They had no money, she had no time.

  “Why should I drop everything just because you want to get away?” She was behind her desk, screaming at him.

  Evan looked at her, defeated and tired.

  “I’ll go myself,” he said.

  But the next day she came in the door on her bike, breathless.

  “Let’s go away,” she said, unstrapping her helmet. “Together. Let’s go to the sea for the weekend. It’ll be fun.”

  “No,” Evan said. “I’m going myself.”

  “No, we’ll do it together, we’ll have a romantic getaway, just the two of us.”

  She went into her pleading mode, where she sat on the floor at his knees, wrapped her arms around his legs, put her head on his lap.

  “I don’t want to go anywhere with you, Annie.”

  “Yes, you do. We’ll have fun, walk along the beach, you know.”

  Of course, Evan gave in. Didn’t he always? And he began to hate himself for it. He was now living the eternal contradiction. He knew he should be gone yet he stayed and began to hate himself for that, too. He was no longer battling Annie, he had already surrendered. Instead he was at war with himself.

  He wanted to leave at 6 a.m., get through customs, get to the ocean by one or two. Daylight was done by 5. But she couldn’t. She needed to run until 8 then eat and wait for the Earth to move. They left around 9:30, got stuck for two hours at the border, arrived after dark, lost the day, bounced around dark dirt roads looking for a place to stay. He found the only auberge open and it had one room at about twice what he was hoping to pay. They had no choice.

  He said nothing. He was trying to be accommodating. But they had a nice time in the room, the sound of the ocean a few metres away, the cold sea air blowing the drapes. It was all good, an expensive dinner and then sex on the fresh cleans sheets. They were away from home and the attendant worries for one day, having a good time. Until she heard voices coming from an adjoining room. Her face darkened, the smile disappeared, the fun sucked out of the room and the evening.

  “I’m not staying if I have to hear that,” she said, bitter and hostile. “I going to call and ask to change rooms.”

  “They have no other rooms,” Evan said, spirits descending to the all-too-familiar hollow place. “Why is it whenever you hear noise from another room when we’re in a hotel, you act as if it’s my fault? It’s like you’re pissed at me.”

  “I don’t mean it to be, it’s just …”

  “It’s just when you’re unhappy, someone has to be blamed and I’m the one naked beside you so it might as well be me.”

  “I’m sorry, I just can’t stand hearing other people when …”

  “Annie, there are other people in the world and they have a right to talk, watch TV and have sex, just like us.”

  “But I
don’t want to hear them. I brought ear plugs.”

  She climbed over him and rummaged through one bag and then another and finally found them and pushed them into her ears and grabbed the ubiquitous newspaper from her purse and began to read.

  He took a deep breath. They had had almost one day without an OCD intrusion. Maybe that was progress, he thought, turning over and thinking about the Keys and the green waters of the Gulf of Mexico, trying to ignore the rattle of the newspaper.

  The next morning, their first and only day in Gloucester, MA, the sun was gleaming across the sea and the birds were circling outside. Evan couldn’t wait to get out. Annie needed to stay in the room for her bowel movement so he drove to town to get an espresso and see the village. When he returned she was alone in the little dining room, next to the picture window. Through it he saw the sea, the waves splashing against the rocks, a little island a few hundred yards off the shore with a lighthouse in the centre and seabirds circling. She was pounding on her keyboard.

  He loved her then mitigated with a touch of sympathy and the wrenching realization she would always be her.

  “Hey darling, what are you doing?” he asked, grabbing a bowl of fruit salad from the meagre continental free breakfast and joining her as she concentrated on the keyboard.

  “I’m sending an e-mail.”

  “Have you seen what’s outside the window?”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty.”

  “This is our only day here,” he said. “What’s so important?”

  “There’s this whole flap about the film that opened the doc film festival …”

  “The outrageous film full of tits and ass that exploits women, turns them into sex objects?”

  “Yeah and they’re organizing a petition to the festival and …”

  “Annie, lots of people don’t even read e-mail on Saturday morning and we have one single day here by the sea and you’re buried in your computer. You think the outrage can wait until tomorrow when you’re not sitting next to the ocean?”

  “Yeah, I guess, you’re right.” She closed the machine. They shared a breakfast staring at the sea, talking about what they could do. She was aching for a good espresso, was certain she couldn’t get one on the island though he had told her several times they had a few good Italian cafés. She didn’t believe him.