The Alcoholic's Daughter

by David Sherman

  “She wants equality with men and then starts to scream ‘help police’ when she’s splashed with water?” His ex-wife asked. “What kind of feminist is she? Is afraid ‘cause you’re bigger than she is. Make up your mind, Girl? Are you a feminist or a poor little helpless girl?”

  He was on the therapy couch. He kept looking at everything but her. This was happening to someone else.

  “If it hadn’t been the water, she would’ve found something else,” the therapist said. “She wasn’t in control and therefore had to take control somehow, regardless of the cost. You’re leaving her and you had to be destroyed. I’m sure it’s not the first time she’s done this.”

  “I still love her, I think. I think I’m nuts.”

  “Love doesn’t just die, but it will eventually. It’ll take time. A long time.”

  “I couldn’t save her,” he told her. “Funny, her baggage was too heavy. I couldn’t save her, couldn’t save us, not sure I can save myself.”

  He told his brother: “I still love her.”

  “You crazy?” he said, laughing. “How can you love someone who had you thrown in jail?”

  How can you love someone who has thrown you in jail? He must be fucking crazy.

  The destruction of his love for Annie was a death by a thousand cuts and would soon be buried. He just had to kiss the casket as it was lowered into the ground. Her love for him? He had no idea and he asked himself, does it matter?

  He forced himself to rehearse. The band piled into the condo he was using and they ran through the set list. He wasn’t all there but it sounded not bad. He liked to watch Mickey. When the songs found their groove, Mickey would pound away at the bass and swing back and forth with the beat and smile. When Mickey was doing all that, all was right.

  He wanted to cancel but couldn’t. He wasn’t enough of a showman to buy into the “show-must-go-on” chestnut and did a show at an out-of-town café somewhere in farm country. It was the only game in town and the place was full. He was near panic mode. Always nervous before a show, it was now a battle to concentrate on doing his thing on stage — lyrics, melody, voice, chords, performance — and not what he was going through off stage. Just before he went on, Caroline Leslie climbed the little stage and, accompanying herself on the guitar, began to sing. She had a shock of long red hair and a hell of a voice, range, style, power and she was beautiful. He was riveted. When she finished, he went to talk to her, wondering if she’d like to sing a bit together. When he climbed on stage to do his hour and fifteen, he felt right at home and all the worries and fears disappeared. The band lined up behind him. Mickey leaned over and said: “We’re going to lay down this sweet road for you, all you got to do is sit back and enjoy the ride. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  This was life. He had a roomful of strangers in front of him, and this great band of guys behind him and he was going to do his best to make the crowd laugh and make them cry, hit a few good notes. John hit a series of quarter notes on the snare and Evan waited for the boom of the kick drum, the big bass, and then Mickey came in and Evan followed, reaching down somewhere to seal out the world and live in the glare of the spotlight that was in his eyes and the nameless faces that were with him. He sang, he played, watched his brain take over and move his fingers and listened to the bass and drums with one ear, himself with the other and kept glancing over at the woman in the red hair watching him. Evan looked over his shoulder and Mickey was grooving to the tune, swaying back and forth with the big electric bass and the audience was smiling. A couple took each others’ hand and the young woman put her head on her partner’s shoulder. Evan smiled. He was free. The guys in the band were kind of protecting him, like a pitcher knowing he has eight other guys on the field to make him look good. The fraternity was going to shelter him. All he cared about was the song. He looked out and the room and Caroline was smiling at him, her head keeping time. He wasn’t sure how he got here but he wasn’t sure of too much anymore. How did forever turn into a jail cell? But it didn’t matter. His mind was moving ahead to the next verse as he checked the set list for the next song and he settled into the show, found his cruising altitude and nothing else mattered. Nothing at all.

  When he got home he found an e-mail from Caroline Leslie. “I really enjoyed your set.” He wrote back. A week later she was at his door for dinner. A few hours later they were having a hell of a time. They never even looked at the clock. They drank and smoked and made love and talked and played songs for each other and his mind was at ease for the first time in, what would it be … months, years? This was life, he thought.

  It took six weeks for some semblance of an appetite to return. He actually went food shopping and stood at the front of Loblaw’s, looked at the expanse of fruit and cheese and fish down by the end, the breads and cakes in the back, knew a right turn would bring him to the meat and he smiled.

  He spread his arms.

  “I’m back!” A woman pushing a shopping cart full of cases of Pepsi and Kelloggs cereal and fruit rolls, with a kid in tow, looked at him like he was mad. Maybe he was.

  There were crumbs on his cutting board, a few stains on the stove top, but he started working again, writing stories for a bunch of papers and a magazine he discovered and writing songs. His gut was often knotted still, but he was popping once-a-day baby aspirin to ward off the effects of heart attack and stroke just in case this did him in. He was on a light ration of sedatives to keep the recurrent anger and resentment at bay and he took half a sleeping pill with a bit of scotch to make sure his mind didn’t replay the ugliness of the last few years when he wrestled with sleep.

  He knew Stan was right. One day he’d take a deep breath and he’d be free. There were moments and he was sure soon there would be hours and then days and then all would be good. Caroline had helped soothe the pain and fill the emptiness and teach him again about loving and living. He was rediscovering himself through her. She saw nothing wrong with a late-night meal in Chinatown or jumping into the car on a Sunday morning to go up north for the day. He never heard about her bowel movements.

  He spoke with Annie on the phone. Once. Her version of the dying days was markedly different than his. But, of course, they would be. For a few moments he entertained an end to this nightmare, a reconciliation based on honesty and therapy and a willingness to work. But to Annie, he was to blame for it all. And he finally accepted, as if Fritz the big cat had woke him with a claw to his eye, that it wasn’t all about compulsion, obsession and abuse. Or even lies. Annie was sick and there was no cure.

  She sent him a note saying what she needed, a long list, hoping they would conclude the house sale harmoniously. He told her her needs were no longer his priority. His priority was salvation and the sale of the house would be handled by his lawyer. From now on his needs would be paramount, he wrote her. And then he added: “I don’t want to hear from you again, speak to you or see your name in my inbox. Ten years of hell is enough.”

  Of course, for her it wasn’t. There was no way to negotiate a fair price for the house, she wouldn’t budge or compromise. She refused to let him have his furniture. She wouldn’t drop the criminal charges or allow them to set a trial date. She wanted to keep him hanging and controlled. He hired a new criminal lawyer from an all-female firm. The new lawyer, Anita, told him this was SOP for many women. They wouldn’t let go, preferring to have some hold than nothing at all. She even had the audacity to say the feminist lobby had convinced lawmakers that in domestic disputes, men were always automatically guilty.

  “We have to wait for the report from the social worker to see how Annie has been damaged by getting her face wet,” she said, laughing.

  His civil lawyer was preparing litigation to sue for the house and for his belongings. Annie wouldn’t discuss or negotiate. The lawyers would do well.

  Freight trains rattle by each night, bound for he didn’t know where. The house shakes almost imperceptibly, but the milelong string of flat beds and box cars and tankers keeps rolling,
impervious to the weather or the crumbling town they left behind. They’re determined.

  They’re a bit of an inspiration. There are no tracks for Evan to follow, no destination he is locked into, no schedule to keep.

  His imperative is to be rid of the basket of Annie’s personality disorders. The love for her was dead and that was killing him. Working hard had always, well, worked. Write long enough, rewrite enough times, plays were produced, articles published, songs recorded. Work didn’t set you free but it did make things happen. Except with Annie. He almost killed himself working at it and working at it almost killed him. Romantic love was maybe a Hollywood conceit. But he was never good at giving up. He heard Caroline laugh, heard her sing, saw her smile. He was an incorrigible romantic.

  The town he was leaving behind is the delusion that he could save her, save them. He was rid of it, shedding a bit more day by day. Evan figured she will be besieged by the burden of that basket of snakes the rest of her life. In charitable moments he wished her well. Except there were few charitable moments. Mostly now he thought of the next gig and working out arrangements with the band. Somehow these guys he barely knew had come to his rescue. He went back to working on a song for the show two weeks down the line. He was going to make them laugh and then he was going to make them cry.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The author wishes to thank Guy Sprung, Hyman Weisbord, Marvin Gasoi, Marilyn Mill, Earl Fowler, Richard Pinet, Peter Jarosz, Reisa Manus, Dominique Normand, Fred Reed, Janet Wilson, Valentina Corsetti and Heidy Kowalenko for their unwavering support during days of high water; Earl and Marilyn and Fred for their contributions and insight into the first drafts; Nancy Lee for the golden voice, strong shoulders and big heart, who proved true love is not a fantasy and, lastly, Virginia, for her invaluable research into narcissism, abuse and control which made this work of fiction possible.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  David Sherman has worked as a newspaper and magazine journalist and editor, CBC radio producer, playwright, filmmaker, screenwriter, singer/songwriter and now novelist. He abandoned the newspaper business when layoffs and budget cuts decimated the industry and concentrated on writing for the theatre and writing and performing as a folksinger. His latest play, Lost and Found, produced by Infinitheatre and written with his partner Nancy Lee, is a musical, inspired in part, by The Alcoholic’s Daughter. They wrote the songs and story and performed the play in Montreal, B.C. and the Laurentiens. Sherman is also a gym rat and was an avid squash player and cyclist before the body said enough and the medicine chest overflowed. He is now working on another novel in between walking in the woods with his Chocolate Lab named Jesse and swimming in the lake behind his house, a century-old former fishing lodge, where he occasionally obsesses over dinner parties.

  ESSENTIAL PROSE SERIES 135

  Guernica Editions Inc. acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. The Ontario Arts Council is an agency of the Government of Ontario.

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.

  Copyright © 2017, David Sherman and Guernica Editions Inc.

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Please Note: This is a work of fiction.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  Michael Mirolla, general editor

  Isabelle Schumacher, editor

  David Moratto, interior and cover design

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  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2016959337

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Sherman, David, 1951-, author

  The alcoholic’s daughter / David Sherman.

  (Essential prose series ; 135)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77183-159-8 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-77183-160-4 (EPUB).

  --ISBN 978-1-77183-161-1 (Kindle)

  I. Title. II. Series: Essential prose series ; 135

  PS8637.H485A43 2017C813’.6C2016-907544-3C2016-907545-1