A few times in my life I’ve had moments of absolute clarity. When for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh. It’s as though it had all just come into existence.
—Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man
TWENTY-FIVE
Ready or Not, Here Comes Jamie!
“What’s happened to your hair?! It’s not red anymore!” That was the first thing Mama Jean said to me when Michahaze returned me to her after my week in detox. She was in our apartment, where she’d been waiting ever since she slapped on her face in Beaumont and flew to my rescue. It was just before noon and she was having a gown day. She wore the black satin nightgown with oversize red roses that she’d picked out for me to give her one Christmas as she held on to the art deco bar she’d reluctantly given to Michahaze and me years ago. Gathering dust in the bottom cabinet of the bar was a laptop computer, also a gift from her, but given with the vain hope that I’d start writing. It was the first time I’d seen her since I came to on that emergency-room gurney following my melodramatic suicide attempt.
As obsessed with hair as Mama Jean was, it was no surprise that she immediately pounced on the fading of my copper-red “crowning glory.” It was cataclysmic that my hair had gotten as out of her control as my drinking. My hair was still red, but it was no longer the shiny-penny hue of my youth. It had merely dulled with age, but it seemed to match the dullness in my eyes, which had deadened with drink.
I had been wrong when I was on that emergency-room gurney and lay in fear of her reaction. She didn’t jump on me with “God … damn it!” She didn’t give me a red-fingernailed I-told-you-so point. She didn’t glare and bare her teeth to declare, “You don’t know what love is.” Standing there in her nightgown without her face on, holding on to the bar as if it were a crutch, she wasn’t in charge. She almost looked lost.
After she scrutinized my fading follicles, she hugged me long and hard, as if I were a doll that someone had threatened to take away from her. She held my face in her hands, a pose that Dad had captured in so many photos of us. Then she pulled back and penetrated my gaze with her eyes. “Oh, I’m so glad to finally see you. I knew you had to be in that place, but it was killing me being this close and not being able to lay eyes on you. God, I love you so much.”
I had spoken to her from a hallway pay phone during the week I was locked on the sixth floor of the drunk tank, shuffling down linoleum floors in paper slippers. It was the detox ward of the hospital a few blocks from our apartment, where Michahaze had taken me after he’d discovered me in our bed. The ward was under lock and key and no visitors were allowed, which must have been torture for Mama Jean. Everyone there had been pulled from the central-casting department of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
The first night the bed next to mine was empty, but when I awoke the next morning, I saw a ghost of white sheets rising from that bed with a gray face the color of a new bruise.
The ghost spoke in slow motion. “So how’d you end up here?”
“Booze and pills. I took an overdose of Ambien.” That was the first time I’d said it out loud, but I’m not sure if I believed it. “What about you?”
“The usual. Heroin,” he said matter-of-factly, as if delivering the weather report. “I’ll have a nice rest here for a week like I’ve done a lot of times before. Once I’m back on the street, I’ll pick up again. It’s too late for me.” Behind him, the window to the city was as gray as his face and streaked with rain.
Most of my fellow detoxers were like the Junkie Ghost: repeat offenders in for a week to dry out, rest, eat some regular meals, and then return to their old lives on the streets. The place had a postapocalyptic feel, as if a nuclear bomb had hit and the only saved people were unshaven zombies in buttless hospital gowns and pill-dispensing nurses in pastel smocks.
As dead as I felt, I decided I no longer wanted to die. But my fantasy of life after detox couldn’t stretch further than being put away in a nice sanitarium with an attractive gentleman orderly in crisp, white scrubs who’d push me down a gently sloping, verdant lawn in a cane-back wheelchair to receive the occasional visitor in the late-afternoon sun.
But I’d made it out of detox, and there I was standing before a relieved Mama Jean. “At least I got to talk to you while you were in that place. Every day we spoke, I could hear a little bit more life in your voice.” Then she started to regain her dexterity. “I knew”—said with a red-fingernailed point—“every time I talked to you these past few months.… I said, ‘Earl, something’s not right. I’m telling you. There’s something wrong.’” She hugged me again. Dad had stayed in Beaumont, probably because of the expense of the last-minute flight. Besides, this was a job for Mama Jean.
“Well, I’m better now!” I said with the phony cheer of an Olive Garden waiter.
“Not quite. You’re alive.” She quickly glanced over my shoulder at Michahaze.
“Uh, Jeffrey is coming over in a minute. So are Smith and Jennifer and Janine.”
“Now?”
Mama Jean had told me on the phone in detox that she and Jeffrey and Michahaze had been talking to my college girlfriends Smith, Jennifer, and Janine. Jeffrey remembered that Smith was visiting from San Francisco and called her for help.
Smith was one of the few friends of mine that Mama Jean not only liked, but unconditionally adored. “Oh, she’s just precious! I would have killed to have had a little girl like that.” Cupid-size with sometimes-blond hair in a pixie cut à la Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, she was a blue-eyed sprite. On my dresser is a photo of her and Mama Jean from the night they first met after years of hearing stories about each other and periodically talking on the phone. It was the night that Mama Jean earned her name. I wasn’t there. She and Dad were in San Francisco and brought Smith to Teatro ZinZanni, a blend of circus and cabaret in which the audience is encouraged to dress up and be a part of the show, never an arm-twister for either Smith or Mama Jean. Their heads are pressed together in close-up: Mama Jean is ecstatic; Smith’s angelic face stares at the camera, her eyes popped in surprise. Their instant bond that night was sealed by a red feather boa draped around their necks. The day after that night Smith called to tell me, “Jame! [Smith’s nickname for me] I finally met your mother. Wow! You weren’t kidding. And she’s one mama who loves her baby. All I can say is Mama Jean!”
Smith called Jennifer and Janine since they were psychologists. As Smith told me later, they had all met while I was detoxing, and Janine, who specializes in addiction treatment, clinically and gingerly begins to explain to Mama Jean, Michahaze, and Jeffrey the five stages of alcoholism: early/adaptive (it’s all fun and an ability to drink bottomlessly—Swingin’, baby! Swingin’!), middle (craving, physical dependence, loss of control, blackouts—Verboten in Zurich, Dressing Drinks, Biting Jason, Lost in Rio), late stage (severe physical effects—that distended liver in the orchid aisle of Home Depot—loss of family and or job—“mounting complaints … it’s best if you leave the company”).
Janine made eye contact with Mama Jean as she said, “Jamie is in the third or late stage, and at this stage, it is wise and probably necessary—”
“Cut to the chase, Janine. Are we going to have to lock him up?”
Yes. Because the fourth stage of alcoholism is treatment.
Soon the apartment was filled with Jeffrey, Smith, Janine, and Jennifer. I had agreed over the pay phone in detox to go to rehab. The way I understood it, detox was merely a place to rid the body of alcohol and drug toxins under medical supervision. It was a kind of purgatory before either returning to the hell of a life of booze and dope or going on to a multiweek rehab with the promise of sober salvation. Everyone was showing up for a reinforcement intervention to make sure I didn’t change my mind.
“To what do I owe the honor of your smiling faces?” I said to all of them as if they were there for a surprise birthday party for me. Jennifer was having none of my faux jolly. With a
look of worry and verge-of-tears agony that could make a Jewish mother feel guilty, she said, “Jamie. You tried to kill yourself.” Do you have to remind me? I wanted to say.
Janine, with her cascade of jet-black hair and assured air of professional confidence, quickly got to work and fanned on the coffee table a selection of handouts and rehab brochures. She opened the dialogue by saying, “I always knew this moment would come.” We whittled it down to three: Hazelden in Minneapolis (A classic, but Minneapolis in October? Minneapolis anytime?), Silver Hill in Connecticut (Learning to play bridge with rich housewives addicted to chardonnay and prescription pills would be very Valley of the Dolls), and Michael’s House in Palm Springs, an all-male facility (If I’m going to rehab, I might as well get laid). I picked Michael’s House.
“I might have known you’d choose that one,” Mama Jean said as she pulled out her proverbial checkbook. She, rather than insurance, was paying the $16,000 because in detox I made the mistake of not lying when asked if I was still suicidal. Had the answer been yes, my insurance would have paid. Mental note: Next time I’m in detox and I’m asked how I’m feeling, the answer is always “Suicidal. Suicidal.”
After the decision was made, a bed was reserved at Michael’s House for the next day. Why does one reserve a bed and not a room? It sounds so Bowery. When I imagined my entrance into rehab (I had had nightmares about it as a part of my future ever since that call from Jack), I always imagined guzzling a fifth—okay, a magnum—of gin right out of the bottle, timing the last drop to my arrival. I’d toss the empty bottle out of the taxi window, wipe my mouth on my sleeve, and roll out of the car. Like Susan Hayward in the booze movie I’ll Cry Tomorrow, I’d flip my hair, do a tit thrust, hold my head high, and stumble through the wrought-iron gates of the alcohol-treatment sanitarium on a broken heel. As the gates closed behind me, I’d slur with conviction, “Okay. Now I’m ready to get sober.”
But no. I was told by Janine that I couldn’t show up drunk to Michael’s House. They’d refuse me. That if I did, I’d have to re-detox. Really? I didn’t believe that. “Your drinking days are over,” Mama Jean said. She was back in command with a fully charged battery.
To insure that I didn’t drink, Smith rerouted her flight back to San Francisco so she could accompany me on the plane to Palm Springs. She couldn’t afford the expense of changing her flight. Since Michahaze and I were cash-strapped and Mama Jean said she had to draw the financial line somewhere, Janine and Jennifer split the cost for Smith to travel with me.
As decisions were quickly made for me, Jennifer, Smith, Michael, and Jeffrey whirled past with an endless exodus parade of liquor bottles. Wait! Not the banana liqueur! I wanted to say. What if I want to make bananas Foster? Instead, I stood in silence, holding back the tears as magnums of Beefeater gin, Absolut vodka, Jack Daniel’s, and sundry other libations were removed from my life. What if someone wants an after-dinner drink?
Michahaze and Jeffrey carted the booze train out the door, and Smith and Janine and Jennifer followed. Mama Jean went into Michahaze’s and my bedroom for a nap. I was left alone to start pulling it together before I disappeared for sixty days. I had to call my boss, Debbie. Her last e-mail to me, “Again???”—the one I read before swallowing the Ambien—rang in my head like an alarm-clock buzzer that couldn’t be silenced. Have I drunk myself out of another job? I can’t handle the humiliation. Michahaze had already spoken to Debbie. I called to tell her that I’d be going away for sixty days. “Take as much time as you need. Just go and get better. Your job is waiting for you when you get back.” Pause. “If you still want it.”
Did I?
Oh, God. Liz.
I had been in the middle of planning with Karen and Jo Ann the publishing-industry memorial for Liz that was to happen in October. Now I couldn’t finish it, much less attend it. I had gotten as far as pulling together a suggested playlist of her music. I sent Karen and Jo Ann an e-mail saying that I was sick and going away: “Be sure to include Dusty Springfield’s version of ‘The Look of Love’—it’s what I personally associate with Liz. It’s the song I played over and over the night of her funeral. I remember her sitting in my apartment, looking ecstatic while listening to the song and saying, ‘Oh! It’s almost as good as sex.’ My speech was going to be called ‘The Look of Liz.’”
I remembered riding home in a cab with Karen after the initial planning dinner for Liz’s memorial. I asked her what Liz had thought of me. “Oh, she loved you.” Then Karen hesitated before finishing with “She always said, ‘Jamie has such … potential.’”
Potential. That stung.
Keep moving, I told myself.
What to pack for Palm Springs? Should I pack a tennis outfit? I don’t have a tennis outfit. I don’t even play tennis. What awaits me in Palm Springs? All I thought I knew of rehab was Liz Taylor in a caftan scrubbing her own toilet bowl. Will I be locked up? Humiliated into sobriety? I panicked. My heart was racing and my hands were shaking. God, I want a drink. Just one—maybe two—to calm my nerves. I looked at Mama Jean napping on my bed. How long will it take Michahaze to deposit the booze? I thought seriously of running to the bar across the street for a pop. I stood still and didn’t do anything. Then I saw a biography of Ava Gardner that I had promised to loan to Mr. Parker. The book was juicy, with endless stories of her ravening appetite for booze and sex followed by weeks of drying out in Arizona. I dashed off a note to him and stuck it in the book: Dear Mr. Parker: They’re putting me away, like they put away Ava. L, J. I later realized that writing that note instead of running across the street was a little miracle.
* * *
By bedtime, my bags were packed, minus a tennis outfit, and Mama Jean was asleep in our bedroom. On the sofa bed in the den, Michahaze and I lay next to each other, stiff as cadavers. From the silence of the room and the absence of breathing sounds, I knew he was still awake.
“Michael?”
“Jamie?”
“Can you sleep?”
“Uh-uh.”
“I’m scared.”
“So am I.” He grabbed my hand under the covers. “But you’ll go away and you’ll get better. And while you’re away, I’ll be here waiting for you so we can resume our life together.”
“Michael, I love you.”
“I know. You’re the love of my life.”
I didn’t think I’d ever fall asleep, but I did. I awoke to Mama Jean whispering my name. I looked up and she was standing in the bedroom doorway backlit by the dim glow of the bedside lamp inside. She motioned to me. “Come here. I want to talk to you before I leave.”
I did as I was told. She went into the room and lay down on her back on the Victorian bed she’d given us. She was on the left side—her side of the bed—dressed and fully made-up, not a hair out of place at four-thirty in the morning. She had a six A.M. flight and was waiting for a car to pick her up. At that time, who would care what she looked like? I knew the answer. She would.
I lay on my stomach, half on the bed, my feet still on the floor. I thought the tableau could have been in her bedroom in Beaumont until I looked at the nightstand on my side of the bed. The last time I had looked, a drained glass of vodka and an empty bottle of Ambien had been on it. It was also where I kept the Atripla, my HIV medication, which had been hidden before Mama Jean arrived. When I was still on the gurney and Jeffrey told me she was in flight, I had been so worried about her discovering my medication. She could never know about my HIV status. Michahaze remained negative; he had been tested after I told him, just to be sure.
Mama Jean stared at the ceiling. “Thank God for those girls. I don’t know what I would have done without them. You’re lucky to have friends like that.”
“I know.”
She reached out for me to take her hand. I did. It had been a long time since I’d held her hand. It was as soft as I remembered it. “I walked around this apartment for a week in a daze—oh, your little hand is so warm. I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
&nb
sp; “It’s going to be okay now.” I felt ashamed of the dread that had filled me when Jeffrey told me that she was coming. In the way that she had been a nagging voice in my head during so many dark moments of my drinking—the only thing left of my conscience—my fear of facing her was wrapped up in the fear of facing what had brought me to that gurney. It wasn’t her I didn’t want to face. It was me. I hadn’t even spent twenty-four hours with her, but I felt as if she had saved me, fixed the situation like a deus ex machina in a Greek play descending from the heavens and waving a checkbook.
“You can’t know how I scared I was.”
“I’m sorry. So sorry.” I really was.
She abruptly let go of my hand and raised hers in warning to me. She looked me in the eye. “Let me tell you something. You can never drink again. Never.”
“I know.”
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
Silence. She folded her arms across her chest and stared back at the ceiling, her mouth slightly open and lips curled tightly over her teeth.
After a beat she spoke, still staring at the ceiling, not looking at me. “You know, suicide is a mortal sin. It’s a good thing you didn’t succeed. If you had, you couldn’t spend eternity in heaven with me.”
TWENTY-SIX
If They Could See Me Now
“Look, Coach, I’ll run three laps around the baseball diamond instead. Just don’t make me play baseball. I hate competitive sports. I hate sports.” I was pleading with a sixty-something, potbellied, snow-topped, bulbous-nosed, sober man in polyester shorts and a baseball cap who insisted on being called Coach.
“Everybody plays the game, Brickhouse,” Coach said.
“But Coach, the point of this is physical fitness. I want to be fit and lose this liquor fat. Believe me. But I’m telling you, playing baseball is not going to help my sobriety. In fact, it threatens my sobriety.”
He was silent, his reaction unreadable. Where his eyes should have been, two palm trees stared back at me in the mirrored lenses of his aviator sunglasses. I felt as if I were back in junior high PE class: scheming, bartering—anything to get out of playing the game. It was one thing to be in rehab, but to be forced to throw and catch a ball with my fellow alkie, druggie inmates was a sick joke. And to think I had been worried about being forced to scrub a toilet bowl with a toothbrush. I thought of that song from Sweet Charity: “If my friends could see me now … they’d never believe it!”
Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir Page 19