by Jane Green
My true feelings. I’m still trying to process what my true feelings are, although I’m pretty sure I know.
I know because I haven’t been able to talk to Jason since the night I saw him kiss Julia. I took Annie to Sconset the next day, just us girls, and when we got home I went straight up to bed with a pretend migraine so I wouldn’t have to go out for dinner with them. Anything to avoid spending time with Jason.
I couldn’t stand it. That moment, him kissing Julia, keeps spinning round and round my head, on a reel, and each time it does I have to fight the tears. And the anger. And the knowledge that Jason was just a pawn, that Julia’s smile told me everything. Had I not happened to walk into the bar and see them, she would have found a way to let me know. She would have found a way to rub my nose in it, for she could see, anyone could see, how I still feel about Jason, and she had waited years for revenge.
I had always thought that Ellie was the bitch, that Julia was the one I had so much in common with, but Ellie, despite everything, was at least honest. Julia had been holding her secret poisonous grudge all this time, and I never saw it. I didn’t know.
Did she even care about Jason? I doubt it. I doubt this had anything to do with Jason other than being the perfect way to get back at me. And Jason was stupid enough to be carried away, to be flattered into seduction, to lose himself in the moment thinking I would never find out.
At least I presume that’s what he thought. I haven’t seen him since. We had different flights home, and in the three weeks since we’ve been back I have managed to avoid him completely, out of the house when he comes to pick Annie up, clicking his phone calls over to the answering machine, texting him the briefest, curtest texts when I have no other choice.
Love and forgiveness. How I wish I were in a place of love and forgiveness. But I’m not. I’m in a place of hatred and murderous thoughts.
Martin closes the book and starts to speak, as I wait with bated breath.
“I’m Martin, alcoholic.”
“Hi, Martin,” from the rest of the group.
“Great reading.” He shakes his head slowly, as if unable to believe the magnificence of what he just read. “So much food for thought. So, here’s what’s going on for me today.”
My heart sometimes sinks slightly when someone starts with apologizing for going off topic, or announcing what’s going on with them today. It can mean fifteen minutes of something that’s totally irrelevant, at least to whatever the topic is supposed to be.
It can mean, often, venting about the problems in their life, and so it is with Martin, who spends about fifteen minutes talking about some problem at work with his bastard of a boss, and it has nothing to do with the reading, and nothing to do with AA, or recovery, in fact, until he talks about forgiveness. And then I listen.
And when he is done, I realize my hand is up in the air.
Wouldn’t you know it, the first person he looks at is me.
Shit. I hate it when this happens. Putting my hand up is like an involuntary reaction when something is bursting out of me, and I sigh and roll my eyes.
“Shit,” I say out loud. “I was hoping you wouldn’t pick me.” And everyone in the room laughs. “I’m Cat, alcoholic.”
“Hi, Cat.”
I take a deep breath. “Thank you for your lead, Martin. I’m completely unprepared, but I think in today’s reading I may have heard what I needed to hear. I definitely needed to hear about love and forgiveness because right now I’m about as far away from loving and forgiving as I have ever been, and that, as we all know, is a recipe for disaster.” I grimace and continue. “I just got back from a holiday in which I flew to America, essentially to make amends to my half sisters. It’s a very long story, but the last time I saw them I was in my twenties, wreaking havoc wherever I went, blackouts being the norm, and one night, back then, I went out with my sister’s boyfriend, we both got completely shitfaced, and the next morning we were found in bed together. By her, obviously. As if it could have been worse.”
There is a murmur of pain around this room. However different their stories may be, most have drinking stories of equal horror.
“Clearly, doing my ninth step, this was the big one, so I decided to do it in person. The amends seemed to go okay. One sister, Ellie, wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy, but honestly, who can blame her. She didn’t want anything to do with me, but the other one, the one whose boyfriend I slept with, said it all happened long ago and she had forgiven and forgotten years ago. I believed her. Why wouldn’t I?” I snort. “She was as warm and lovely as she had been years ago. I remember when I first met her I instantly felt that I’d come home. I knew her. This was my family. And I felt the same when I saw her again. So we forged a friendship, and her niece and my daughter, who are very close in age, became instant best friends, and everything seemed to be great.
“While I was there, my daughter got into an accident, and my ex-husband ended up flying out too. If it all sounds terribly complicated, it’s because it is. Sorry. My daughter was fine, a broken wrist, scratches and stitches, but fine. So my ex-husband…” I take another breath, a deep one. “We split up a year and a half ago. Like so many of us, I was the one who fucked up my marriage. The first time I got sober, I got sober for my husband. Every time I got sober after that, I got sober for my husband, because I loved him, and I wanted him to be happy, and proud of me. And because I was never getting sober for me, it never lasted. A few weeks, a few months, I could never get it to stick. So my marriage was a roller coaster. Fantastic when I was sober, and then I’d start drinking, and raging, and we’d start fighting, and I never ever thought he’d leave. I thought we would just carry on like that forever. And one day, he had enough, and he left. And took our daughter with him.
“I got sober, properly. It felt different. I was finally doing it for myself. I have stayed sober for eighteen months.” There is a round of applause, which I pause to acknowledge before continuing. “And I have tried to move on with my life. We now split custody with my daughter, and things were pretty great between us, in that we got on, we were coparenting. I think he knew how different it was this time. And then he got this horrific girlfriend. The poison dwarf.” Another ripple of laughter around the room. “And he pulled back. She was jealous of the good relationship we had. And maybe she realized something that I hadn’t even realized, not on a conscious level anyway, about how I still felt about him. She hated me, and things were difficult for a while, and I didn’t see him much, and then he flew out to Nantucket, just now, after our daughter had the accident.
“And having him there was amazing. It felt like we were a proper family again, only without it feeling precarious. Every time I was sober before, I always knew, in the back of my head, it wasn’t going to last. I would white-knuckle through it until I couldn’t do it anymore. I had no idea what it meant to live in recovery, to live a peaceful and serene life, until this time. And being with my hus … ex-husband, in the place I am today, was amazing. And after a few days, it hit me that I still love him. I’m still in love with him.” I pause, my eyes welling up, as someone slides a box of tissues over.
“So there I was, thinking things were great, thinking that it was only a matter of time before something happened between us, because there was chemistry. I know there was chemistry there. Toward the end there was a night where I felt something was going to happen, and it was confusing, I could see it was confusing for him too, so he went out. He didn’t come back for hours, and because I’m a woman and a little bit crazy, I started panicking, so I went looking for him. And I found him in a bar, not drinking, he’s a recovering alcoholic too, but kissing someone.” I pause and take a deep breath. “My half sister.”
There is an audible gasp around the room, and it actually makes me laugh. “I know! Right? And not the one who was a bitch, who wanted nothing to do with me, but the one I thought had forgiven me. The one who was pretending to have forgiven me. He didn’t see me. But she did. And she looked into my eyes,
at my shocked expression, and smiled. I knew instantly that this had nothing to do with him, that her accepting my amends was crap; this was all about revenge. She could see how much he meant to me; she knew that the best way to hurt me was through my daughter, or him. And she did. I have no idea if they slept together. I imagine they did. I imagine she would have had to do the same thing to me as I did to her all those years ago. And had I not showed up at the bar, had I not happened to see them, I know she would have found another way to let me know she had seduced the man I love.”
I pause to wipe the tears from my eyes. “I haven’t spoken to him since then. I avoided him the next day, and I’ve managed to avoid him since. I have no idea if he knows anything. Probably not. And I have been sick with grief, and anger, and hatred. Fury with both of them, with her, and so much fury and pain with him. It’s my half sister. He knew it was out of bounds. I still can’t believe he did it. But I also know that avoiding the pain, avoiding my feelings, avoiding him, is old behavior. If anything was painful, I would just run away, cut people off, pretend it had never happened, and I can’t do that now. I can’t do that because avoiding all the painful stuff is going to ultimately lead me to picking up a drink, and I won’t do it; I have to do things differently. But my God, I have wanted to drink. I get to the end of every day thanking God that I managed not to, because it’s all I want to do, to drown the pain. But I haven’t, because I know it’s a few moments of reprieve, and then the spiral down to hell, and I can’t go back there, no matter what’s going on in my life.
“The reading today tells me not to hide. It tells me to tell my ex-husband what I know, and how hurt and betrayed I feel. I don’t know that I necessarily have to tell him I’m still in love with him, but I have to tell him how upset I am. The only person I’m hurting by keeping this all in is me, and if I want to stay sober, I have to do this. What was it the reading said? That the wrongs are never made right? I can’t go back and unsleep with my half sister’s boyfriend. And I can’t change that she then slept with my ex-husband for revenge. But I can express my feelings honestly, and move on. I can love and forgive, and move on in a place of peace.” And as I say these words out loud, it is as if a cloud is lifted, and I know, suddenly, that this is absolutely true, and that by saying it out loud, I am able to let it go.
I still have to talk to Jason, though. Not Julia. I’m letting go of her. I wish her well, I know the girls will stay in touch, but there’s nothing there for me. She may be related to me by blood, but she’s not my family. Maybe at some point in the future we’ll be able to work things out, but I can’t see it today. Today, we’re equal. Two wrongs have not made a right, but they have canceled each other out. It is time for me to move on. I will keep in touch with Ellie. Her honesty has made room for us to have a relationship, and we need a relationship for our daughters.
The meeting continues. More people share. We pass the basket for the seventh tradition, where we make a voluntary donation. I put a couple of pounds in, and I think, once again, how this is my therapy, how extraordinary it is that a group of strangers can make me feel not only so happy, but so completely at home.
At the end, a couple of people stop me as I’m walking out, tell me how my story really resonated with them, or that they hope I’ll come back. I thank them and keep walking, and just as I’m at the door I turn my head and find myself looking straight at the last person I want to see right now. The last person I expected to see right now, and the blood drains from my face.
Jason.
Fuuuuuuuccccckkkk.
* * *
He was in the meeting. I am rooted to the spot in horror, unable to believe what I talked about, unable to believe how honest I was, unable to believe that he was in here, listening to every word.
How did I not see him? Why did I not check the room more carefully? How did I not realize there was a corner, and more chairs squeezed into the space round the corner?
Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. What am I supposed to do now? I open and close my mouth, like a fish, and then I do what every recovering, serene, self-possessed forty-something woman does when faced with an uncomfortable situation: I turn on my heel and run.
* * *
“Cat!” He’s behind me.
Go away, go away, go away.
“Cat! Wait!”
I’m sobbing now, the pain and humiliation too much. I just want to get in my car and drive off a cliff somewhere, except I don’t even have my car here, I took the bloody tube, and I turn the wrong way and it’s away from the tube station and I frantically scour the streets for a taxi but there’s nothing, and then a hand on my arm, and Jason has caught me.
“Cat. Stop. Please. You can’t just run off. I am so sorry you saw me. And I’m sorry that anything happened with Julia. I didn’t sleep with her. I didn’t mean to do anything. I went for a walk and she saw me out the window of the bar and grabbed me. She was drunk, Cat, and I kept trying to leave, and she wouldn’t let me.”
I can’t look him in the eye. “You don’t have to explain anything to me,” I say. “It has nothing to do with me.”
“Bullshit. It has everything to do with you.” The urgency leaves his face as it softens. “Cat, I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?” I am so uncomfortable, I’m actually fidgeting, moving from foot to foot, desperate to stop this conversation and get out of here.
“I didn’t know how you felt about me.”
“I can’t.” It comes out in a howl, as the tears start to fall. “I just … can’t. I’m sorry, Jason. I’m sorry you were there. I’m sorry I opened my big mouth. But I can’t talk about this. I just can’t do it.” And this time, when I turn and run away, my whole body wracked with sobs, he doesn’t come after me.
Thirty-five
The only place I can ever kick my shoes off and feel completely at home is at my mum’s. It may not be the place I grew up in, almost all of the furniture may be completely new, but when I need to feel comforted by something other than a couple of tubs of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and binge-watching Celebrity Big Brother for hours on end, it is to my mother’s flat I go.
I tell her everything.
It is not like me to tell my mother everything, and it is not like me to burst into tears on her sofa as she tucks me up under a fluffy throw and brings me cups of hot, sweet tea, and listens. Really listens, murmuring in all the right places.
Her own depression and my father’s controlling nature pulled her away from me as a child. When I was in pain, or upset, or hurt, I learned to figure it out for myself. I never doubted she loved me, I just knew I couldn’t turn to her for help.
Now, I can turn to her for help.
Where else would I go?
The story comes out in between sobbing like a child, tears spouting from my eyes and my nose running as I pluck tissue after tissue from the box she conveniently keeps on the coffee table.
“How am I ever going to face him again?” I cry, when I have finished the story. “He knows I still love him. It’s the most horrific, humiliating thing that’s ever happened to me. Mum, I want to die. I swear to God, I actually want to die.”
She doesn’t say anything for a while, just smiles gently and rubs my back, waiting for my hiccups to go, passing me more tissues.
I think about when Annie is upset, lying on her bed, crying, and how I sit on the bed, just as my mother is sitting on the sofa, and rub her back, and pass her tissue after tissue.
I have a story about my mother, that she was always in bed, that she was depressed, unhappy, wasn’t able to love me. I have a story that I was raised by wolves, by a father who didn’t want me and a mother who couldn’t stand up to him, who in having to retreat from him, retreated from me too.
I have a story that that is why I turned to alcohol. Because I had no one; because alcohol was my only friend. As I lie here, sodden with grief, I remember. I remember my mother doing this when I was a child. I remember her loving me, and looking after me.
I was jealous of Julia and Ellie, jealous that they had a father, but I had a mother. She might not have been there all the time, but it doesn’t matter.
I was loved.
I know, suddenly and without any shadow of a doubt, I was always loved.
Which only serves to bring on a fresh set of tears.
* * *
“You still love Jason?” my mother asks, when everything seems to have dried up and I am finally able to breathe.
“Yes. Of course. I never stopped loving him.”
“So why be humiliated? Lucky him, having someone as wonderful as you love him. You wouldn’t have told him under different circumstances. Maybe what happened today is a good thing. You couldn’t have gone on avoiding him forever, and isn’t it better for everything to be out in the open?”
“But he doesn’t love me. He doesn’t want me,” I moan, suddenly hit by the full fact of my divorce in a way I wasn’t in the beginning, too busy getting sober, getting my daughter back, assuming that Jason would come back, assuming he would forgive me because we had been through this so many times, and he always had.
This grief I am feeling is completely disproportionate with what was a pretty bad exercise in humiliation, but was just that: an exercise in humiliation. I, however, feel like my world is ending, and I realize, as I lie here, that I am finally accepting this is over.
Jason is never coming back. I may meet someone else, and he may be wonderful, but he won’t be the father of my child; I will never have a whole, intact family again.
I break into a fresh set of tears.
“Do you know he doesn’t love you?” asks my mother, when I have calmed down again.
“Yes. Of course. He doesn’t. It was clear on Nantucket that he wasn’t interested.”