The Alcoholic's Daughter

by David Sherman

  They spent a nice day exploring the town, and left the next morning at 6. She was always willing to skip her bowel movement if it meant getting home early. Home is where she wanted to be. It was a 24-hour escape. The last one. It was late autumn, the days were getting shorter.

  On the third day in Spain he changed apartments. The front door lock was not functioning in the first apartment and they kept getting locked out. The apartment stored their operating cash. They couldn’t afford to keep getting locked out, he thought. Their fixer offered them another, bigger and more central apartment she knew was available and, while Annie was away conferring with the photographer, he moved their luggage and stash of cash into a new place. It was brighter, bigger, closer to the city centre. And had a spare room he knew he’d be sleeping in before too long.

  Annie was miffed. Evan had made a decision. He had taken control away. The lock on the other apartment was fine, was her take on things, he just didn’t know how to use the key. It was his fault.

  She mentioned it several times through taut lips. He saw she was trying to control the knee jerk anger and abuse. Over dinner, with memories of her anxiety and abuse still fresh, Evan lost patience.

  “Enough!” he said. “You’ve told me and you’ve told me and it’s done so just get over it. We had no choice. Can’t call a locksmith every night.” She bit her tongue and they tried to enjoy the dinner. But the evening stayed tense, his scars of the tempest before they got there reopened. He was so tired, he realized, and it wasn’t jet lag. His antenna was fully extended, wary of what was to come.

  Getting ready for bed she heard voices coming up from the street and started to scream at him. Annie’s other half had arrived.

  “I told you you shouldn’t have changed apartments. I told you!” She was running from room to room wearing only a T-shirt, her butt and pubic hair exposed, yelling. “How can I sleep with that? I’ll never be able to sleep. Why did you do it? I told you. There was nothing wrong with the other apartment. I can’t live here!”

  “Calm down. There’s five million people in this city, you’re going to hear people talking.”

  “I can’t, I can’t!” she yelled, running from one side of the apartment to another, bouncing off the walls. He was lying in bed trying to read, watching her, in part fascinated by the force of this compulsion, her loss of control, her hysteria, and curiously bored and angry with it at the same time. She opened the window and began screaming down at the street.

  “Silencio, silencio!”

  Here we go, he told himself, hiding behind a book, but there was no escaping the screaming. He was not sure the “Hold me and everything will be all right” prescription would work here. Then she came to bed and turned away from him and within five minutes fell fast asleep. She had found the Ativan they used on the plane.

  He vibrated in bed for quite awhile, fantasizing about the Florida Keys, dreaming about being home alone in Montreal. He knew the worst was yet to come.

  The adventure in Spain was a disaster. Her refusal to plan had put her into a panic and as usual, when she panicked, he became the enemy. No idea he broached was followed up on, she refused to discuss what she was doing, would contradict everything he said, meddle in everything he tried to do. The trip was hell, dutifully recorded in e-mail to his brother back home who wrote that he was worried and asked how was it going. So he told him.

  “It is going pretty much like I feared it would,” Evan wrote. “It seems I invested a small fortune and three years of my life to make Annie’s book and any interruption of her private game plan is met with tears, recriminations and accusations that my ego is too big and the regular rants of how I’m impossible to work with. The last fight she threw a glass of wine in my face. I reciprocated. She punched me and when I held her fists she kicked at me. She ignores every suggestion, tells me my job is to do what she says. I’m ordered around, ignored, lied to, bitched at, interrupted continually and accused of various crimes and misdemeanours. Then every once in a while, though it’s becoming increasingly infrequent, the woman I love surfaces. She pleads stress but fails to realize, of course, that we’re all stressed and if that excuses her behaviour why doesn’t it excuse mine? She’s allowed anger, I am allowed only obeisance.”

  Yesterday he was brilliant for conceiving the project and raising the money and forming the company. Today he knew nothing.

  “You are not going to do this, take control of what I have worked on for years,” Evan railed. “This is our project, not your project. This is our company, not your company. You will not do this! You will not destroy my ego, you will not destroy my self esteem. You understand that? I will not let you destroy me!” She had been punching him and he had grabbed her little fists and held them. Then he let her hands go and she pulled them away and slammed her elbow into the wall. She threw a glass of wine in his face. He picked up his glass and did the same, wine splattered her and the wall.

  The months of her “I only do what’s important to me and if it’s not important to me I won’t do it” that had preceded their climbing on the plane had taken its toll. He had no more patience. And her panic meant, as always, that he was the cause of her rage and confusion. They were both stark raving mad.

  Finally, on a warm starry night in Barcelona, as they walked silently to dinner, he told her he wouldn’t eat with her. The sight of her infuriated him. He was done. When he came back to their rental, she was cold and silent. He packed his bag.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. He couldn’t speak.

  “Where are you going?” There was fear in her eyes, a tinge of familiar madness. He didn’t trust himself to talk. He knew if he got into it, she would apologize and he would end up staying, and they would start lacerating each other again. He couldn’t even look at her. He left her there, with her glass of wine at the computer, and flagged a cab to the airport. He took a room in the airport hotel. Old times, he told himself. Annie called his cell several times but he ignored it. The next day he flew home. He didn’t know what would happen with the book or with her but he didn’t care. On the plane he swallowed three mg of Ativan and ordered two doubles. It fucked him up but didn’t knock him out. He sat stoned, staring straight ahead all the way to Montreal.

  “So when you panic you kind of curl up in a protective shell and not let anyone in?” the therapist suggested after Annie returned and they attempted salvaging their damaged forever.

  “Yes, I guess,” Annie said.

  “You kind of feel at that time you’re the only one you can trust?”

  Annie nodded.

  Two days before her descent into the rabbit hole, she had told him what a great job he was doing.

  The book still had to be written, the artwork assembled and this was always her task. He was to go over the manuscript after she had written it, but she was the “auteur.” She soon realized she didn’t have the material she needed, the narrative wasn’t there, there was art she had failed to get, her lack of preparation prior to the trip was now in stark evidence. She again went into panic mode. It was his fault because he had left her alone in Spain.

  “You told me I was incompetent, I didn’t know anything, I didn’t know what I was doing,” Evan said. “That everything was my fault, remember?”

  “I never said that,” she screamed. “You’re so goddamn sensitive, everything I say you take personally. You had no right to run out on me, leave me holding the bag.”

  “Maybe you have no right to subject me to your abuse, obsessions, compulsions, your goddamn constipation that you only make worse by drinking that muck and your bloody temper,” he said. “And I told you before we left, I was not going to take it anymore. And I won’t. Get it? I won’t.”

  The support beam holding up the roof, installed during the renovations by her favourite contractor, Michel, snapped. Annie was panicking but when she called Michel, she was all sweet and light. Michel came, said he would fix it for about $500. It would take two men eight hours, he said.

  “
Why do we have to pay?” Evan asked him. “It’s a defect.”

  “It’s been more than four years,” Michel said, smiling at Annie, a smile that said: “Isn’t your partner an idiot.”

  “It’s been four years,” said Annie, looking at Evan like he was an idiot. “There’s no warranty that long.”

  The contractor left and Evan stood with her in the kitchen. “It’s a defect in construction. Support beams are not supposed to fall down after four years. What if the beam holding up the ceiling collapsed? Would you say, ‘sure, Michel, it’s okay, it’s been four years?’ Why did you take his side?”

  “I don’t know why I said that,” she said.

  It became his job to try and find someone to fix the roof since he wasn’t going pay Michel $500 and Annie didn’t do phone calls. He was going to have to fix her mess.

  “You’re going to have to phone your friend Michel and tell him to fix the roof or we’ll sue,” he told her.

  “I’m not doing that,” she said. “You do it.”

  “I tried to talk to him but you defended him. Did you sleep with him?” It was the question he had asked her years ago and several times since whenever Michel would come to repair something and overcharge them and Annie would happily pay whatever he asked.

  “We were friends, that’s all.”

  “Did you have an affair with him?”

  “We were very good friends, I told you,” she said, getting angry.

  Her showpiece house was falling apart but she was perfectly okay with the fact the contractor who had charged them a fortune didn’t want to fix it.

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  “Yes, I did. Okay? I had an affair with him. It was nothing. It was for like two weeks, years ago.”

  “Why did you have to lie?”

  “Because look at the way you’re acting,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t have acted like this because I wouldn’t have hired him,” he said, furious. “Contractors always try to screw you. So now he screwed both of us, you literally and me figuratively. And the fucking roof is falling down and you let him get away with it because you get wet panties every time you see him. Why is it so easy for you to lie?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Your sorrys are worth shit. You’re always sorry. You think saying you’re sorry makes it all better?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I had an affair a few years ago and I’m sorry. That work for you?”

  She stared at him.

  He called the architect who said he and the contractor were responsible for any defects and he would have it fixed for no cost. Michel and he came. Michel fixed it for nothing in an hour and a half.

  “You were right,” Annie said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Did you ever wonder,” he asked, “why he told us it would take two men eight hours and he came and fixed it in an hour and a half?”

  “No.”

  “Ever wonder why he said it would cost $10,000 to install the bathtub when we already have the tub?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think you’re the only little old lady who he has screwed in more ways than one?”

  After dinner, they sat in front of the fire, staring silently. He felt the electricity in the air, the same way you can feel a storm is coming.

  “What’s bothering you?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s bullshit, Annie, I can always tell.”

  “If you made more money I wouldn’t have to work so hard. I’m always working. If there was more money, I could write that novel I wanted to write instead I have to keep doing shitty travel books I’m tired of doing and don’t pay enough and I have to work all the time and you’re having fun!”

  “Annie you have always worked all the time and you have never been able to even start a novel,” he said. “And I’m still paying half the expenses. You’re talking nonsense.”

  “I only agreed to start this publishing company to help you out after you lost your job and I feel like I have to carry you and me and you’re not doing anything. I’m always working, like I’m on a treadmill.”

  “Annie, we started the company ‘cause you wanted to work together. We started it before I lost my job and we started it not to have to give such huge cuts to the publisher and to write what you wanted to write. You are rewriting history. Again. You’re going delusional. Again.”

  “You are playing music and working in the theatre and doing all the things you like and I’m stuck always struggling. You’re enjoying yourself while I bust my ass.”

  “You said you wanted to keep writing travel books,” he told her, still calm. “We talked about this two years ago and I said travel writing was dying, that maybe you had to rethink what you were doing and you tore my head off. These are choices you made. I’ve been pushing you to write the novel for years and you always say you have no time. Well, make time. It has nothing to do with me.”

  She repeated her tirade at the therapist’s the next day. He was to blame for her work compulsion and her inability to get her novel off the ground. He found himself pacing the therapist’s office, listening to her, his anger escalating. Nothing he had said the night before had sunk in.

  “Did you ever write fiction and haven’t you always worked hard?” the therapist asked.

  In the car she said the therapist wasn’t hearing her and didn’t know what she was talking about. He tried to steer the conversation to her favourite topic — money — and how he was worried that the Spain book was a long way from being ready and there was no cash coming in. He thought if they could share the worry burden she might be mollified.

  “You should’ve been worried a long time ago,” she hissed as they drove home. “I’ve been panicked for two years but you’re too busy having a good time.”

  A switch clicked in his head. The words just came out.

  “You know what Annie? Panic by yourself.” He wasn’t thinking, his mouth was just going, letting it all out. “I’m sick of being kicked and told I should get a job as a bureaucrat or flip burgers to mollify your constant fear. I’m sick of your abuse, your obsessions, your compulsions, your refusal to live, your refusal to be happy, your refusal to get help, your lies. I have trouble even looking at you.”

  He barricaded himself in the spare room. Spent his nights in a cheap hotel. He had no idea what he was going to do with himself or where he was going to go but he was going. He kept telling himself he was an asshole for lasting this long.

  She wrote him a note apologizing. She asked why he could not just forgive and move on. He told her he had had enough. It had been 10 years of abuse and anger and craziness. His heart was breaking but his patience was shot. As a friend said: “Better a small death now then a big death later.”

  Alone in his hotel room, he stared at the ceiling. Trust manifests itself many ways. Is your partner there when you need her? Not usually. Does she tell the truth? Who the fuck knows? Can you count on her when things get tough? Not at all. No, we were not meant for each other, he thought bitterly. No, there would not be a forever. No, this was not a way to live. He went for the scotch. This was not a panacea either, he realized, but it would do for now. What else was there? Booze treated him pretty well, as long as he overlooked the hangovers. But it was no worse than the chronic hangovers he had experienced living 10 years with Annie. And there was always Advil. He went home to get some clothes and head up north. He looked out at the garden, at his office. Where was he going? Was he really giving up?

  “I’ll come back on three conditions,” he told her. He was sipping a Coke, she had a glass of white wine in front of her. They were at the Café Cherrier, traffic on St. Denis St. snarled behind them.

  Annie looked shrunken, her face lined, no longer in control.

  “You stop the abuse, physical and verbal. If you hit me again, I’m gone.”

  She nodded.

  “You stop the constant judgement of everything I do and the chronic control over ever
ything.”

  Annie nodded.

  “You stop using my former cocaine use as cudgel every time we argue. I stopped using more than three years ago and you know it and you still bring it up. And you see a therapist, by yourself, not couple’s therapy, but personal psychotherapy, to deal with your issues.”

  Annie nodded. “I can’t see a therapist until I get some money, next year.”

  “You have to do it.”

  “I will,” she said. “I will.”

  They went home. They slept in separate rooms. But they were under the same roof. For the first time, she waved a white flag.

  Driving back from a show in Ottawa with his pockets happily plugged with twenties, he started singing. The ride there had been heart rending. It was a ride they had taken together many times, sometime she fell asleep, sometimes she talked, her hand on his thigh, his right hand on her neck, sometimes she read the paper. The memories ate at him, his stomach seized, tears formed.

  But the show worked, the audience was happy, he got paid and the sun was shining. Next week was the gig with Mickey and the band.

  But today he was free. Car trips with Annie were stressful.

  “I need to pee.”

  “Can’t we wait until the next stop, we got to get there.”

  “I’d like to stretch,” he’d say.

  “Let’s wait until we stop for lunch.”

  “Maybe we should pull in there for gas,” he’d say.

  “No, we have enough, the next one.”

  But soon the warning light would be flashing and the next one was not to be found and Annie would be pulling off at each exit and frantically searching for gas stations. He smiled at the memory. With Annie filling the gas tank was as stressful a process as … as … well, making pasta. He started singing.

  A good memory: After some prodding, one summer night, they took an after-dinner ride to St. Denis St., bought an ice cream cone, locked the bikes and took a walk. Had fun. Only time they did it. The rest of the time she was too tired. She had too much work to do. She had to run in the morning.