by Erin Davis
I dreaded going home to the emptiness of my modern two-bedroom apartment. It was situated above a downtown subway stop and shopping mall, and I recognized keenly the irony of being so close to throngs of people but feeling such solitude. With no prospects for a date on the Friday horizon (despite taking the unusual and expensive and somewhat humiliating step of signing up with a matchmaking service), my solution would be to climb into bed in the midafternoon with a gin martini in a big brandy snifter and sip myself to sleep. Drinking alone: How could that possibly turn into a problem? Besides, I thought I was smarter than that. I would only drink my evenings away until I found someone with whom to share my life and its many little triumphs and frustrations. I would be just fine, thank you.
Lasting love should have saved me in 1986 when I had my first date with Robert Whitehead. Nine years my senior, he was also my boss at an all-news radio station, where I spent four years co-hosting mornings with four different partners. It was a revolving door of “work husbands,” all of whom felt vastly superior to the young woman sitting across from—and often carrying the show for—them. Rob tells me he was my biggest fan from his first day at the Toronto flagship station of the CKO network, where he’d worked his way up the corporate ladder to a position in management, a job he’d come to despise. A producer and creator at heart, he found himself trapped in the workplace drudgery of pencil pushing, number crunching and dealing with inflexible unions and disgruntled employees.
Although it began quickly and looked for all the world like something out of a Nora Ephron–penned movie, our courtship was fraught with complications and drama. I’d invited Rob out to dinner with me one night when I had been offered a free meal in return for doing a restaurant’s commercials. We followed dinner with the Second City Toronto improv show Not Based on Anything by Stephen King, and it was late that evening that two amazing things happened: first, I was up past ten o’clock on a “school night”; second, as we reached for our wine glasses, we both felt a blast of static. Not a shock, exactly, but something that would look like a tiny lightning bolt, if I were to illustrate it. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the sparks had begun to fly and neither of us wanted the night to end. As for that little lightning bolt, I’ve experienced that shot of electricity only four times in my life: that night with Rob, the time I heard the man who would become my college professor talk about Loyalist’s radio broadcasting program, the moment Lauren was born, and the day I first heard my radio mentor Valerie Geller speak. All four moments would have life-changing implications for me.
Try not to gasp in envy when I tell you that Rob drove me home in his brand new Chrysler Magic Wagon! In retrospect, that probably seemed like an unusual choice of vehicle for a single man in his thirties (unless his planned next move was to start buying little stick-figure wife and children decals to put in the back window). If I’d thought to ask him about it, Rob would have explained that the Magic Wagon allowed plenty of room for him to transport his cumbersome hockey and musical equipment. But I didn’t ask: I had more on my mind than why he was driving a minivan—because, to be honest, I wasn’t just enamoured, I was confused. I dated lawyers and stock traders. This motorcycle-riding guy—who was more Doobie Brothers than Brooks Brothers, who wore wide, crocheted ties (including a memorable one in light pink), and who sported a beard—was so not my type. What was going on with me?
It wasn’t until much later that I stumbled upon a reading a psychic had given me when she was a guest on our radio show two years earlier (I had stuffed it into a photo album and forgotten about it). The woman, who’d called in from Los Angeles to do the segment, said I would marry a man named Robert. I’d been doodling on a desk calendar while she talked to me on the phone, and there it was in big block letters: ROBERT. I never dated another Bob or Rob, and I certainly didn’t go out of my way looking for anyone by that name. Interesting, though, isn’t it?
Back to 1986: after what was far too late a night already, I invited Rob up to my apartment for a drink and we proceeded to make beautiful music together. Okay, that’s not a cliché (at least, not in this case). He picked up my guitar, I sat at my electric piano, and we played Beatles music long past midnight. But when he played a little-known song called “The French Waltz” by Nicolette Larson (written by Scottish-born Canadian Adam Mitchell) that happened to be my very favourite, I knew this guy was really special. He was so special, in fact, that when my 4 a.m. alarm went off for work a few hours later, I’d had all of ten minutes’ sleep. And I didn’t care. I was floating on air!
He took me to breakfast later that same groggy morning, when what I’m sure was a bumpy show ended, and told me that this couldn’t possibly work. Endeavouring to hold on to a smattering of pride, I agreed and told him I’d figured as much, which was an outright lie. Turns out I was right. Try as we (okay, he) might to squelch them, the sparks flew again, and just three weeks later, in a state of feeling absolutely no pain after a radio industry awards event, we weaved our way home on foot. Passing through a sprawling downtown mall bustling with holiday shoppers, we paused outside a jewellery store. There, Rob carefully balanced himself on one knee and asked me to marry him. I said, “Yes!” put my hands on his face, kissed him firmly and then helped him up so we could run inside and choose a ring. And it was a beauty!
When I tell people that we were engaged after just a three-week courtship, I usually skip over the next part, the awful part: the part where I thought my heart would actually stop from all of the pain I was going through. When Rob and I went to dinner and Second City that night—November 12, 1986—it was most definitely not a date: he was available only because his girlfriend was away. Engaged-to-be-engaged, his almost-fiancée (a much-loved woman who freelanced in our workplace) was on a trip to Europe, during which she was trying to decide if marriage was the next step she wanted to take, and if Rob was the guy she would take it with. When he told her that he’d begun seeing me, she cut off her lengthy trip to come home, seemingly having decided that she did indeed want to become the second Mrs. Whitehead (a title that, ironically, I never opted to take). And that’s when Rob realized he couldn’t follow his heart and be with me. He was no longer in love with her, but he had to do what was right and that was to honour his commitment. She had offered support and encouragement when his first wife left him after ten years with a huge pile of debt and an even bigger sense of relief. His new fiancée was—and remains—a wonderful person, with whom I’d go on to have a warm relationship at work many years later at a different radio station, when I pushed very hard to have her hired full-time on our show. But at that time, she was the reason my heart had been broken, just as I was the reason hers had been too.
I gave Rob back the diamond ring we’d chosen together that booze-soaked evening in the mall (against the advice of my three furious sisters, who insisted I should teach him a lesson by keeping it) because I didn’t give up hope. I never hated him. I just hurt so badly because I knew in my soul this was the man I was supposed to spend my life with. There were sparks, for heaven’s sake! We sang and played “The French Waltz” together! We both loved root beer schnapps! (Okay, so not all of it makes sense.)
After seeking counsel from a psychiatrist, as well as from a monk who’d been recommended by one of the few co-workers who was in Rob’s corner when he split up with his fiancée, Rob decided he would follow his heart after all and return to me. We picked up our courtship where we’d left off, and despite the cautious vulnerability that our earlier drama opened in me, I proposed to Rob in the summer of 1987. And although we were married in February of 1988, it took me at least a decade to heal from that breakup. Not letting go, it turns out, is my superpower.
In addition to a new and wonderful marital status, 1988 also brought a fresh career challenge: I was offered a position on the morning show of one of the top radio stations in Toronto, CHFI. Rob and I had both had enough of the all-news grind on CKO (the station and its network actually folded one year later, so we were prescient to tak
e our leave when we did), and I had actively sought work on a music station. Soon enough, I was phased out of my newscaster role and moved into a high-profile co-host position with a well-known personality, Don Daynard, a man thirty years my senior who bore a physical resemblance to the comedian George Carlin blended over time with the actor Wilford Brimley, and who idolized John Wayne. Ironically, when we began together, the two of us provided bookends to the demographic our station was seeking: I was twenty-five; he was fifty-four.
Despite our age difference, Don and I had tremendous chemistry and moments of great affection that were evident to listeners: the show and the radio station quickly rose to number one, a position we proudly clung to for a decade. We were advertised in extensive TV campaigns; people knew our faces as well as our voices, and any sense of radio anonymity quickly disappeared. We’d moved to another level of popularity, and these were heady, wonderful times—outside the studio. The four hours we spent together, however, were often an uneven mixture of laughter, tension and anxiety. Don seemed to resent the fact that my job was to bring in the younger end of the audience, eschewing conversations about movie actors from the black-and-white era in favour of, say, the latest on the Spice Girls. I brought a young mother’s perspective to the show, and my partner quite often could not have cared less and wasn’t interested in pretending otherwise. I felt unwelcome on the show I had come to share and had been so thrilled to be a part of. It was frustrating to me and deeply hurtful. And I took those feelings home with me every day, ready to drown them at the first opportunity.
The rear-view mirror perspective of time has taught me that I readily made myself vulnerable to much of the pain I experienced by expecting or hoping for too much from my partner. What I wanted and felt I’d earned—respect, appreciation and genuine affection—were things he was perhaps not so much unwilling as simply unable to give. Maybe it was because he was born in 1934 and was a product of his time. My dad was born one year earlier, and I could certainly draw similarities: when Dad (also named Don), a former airline pilot, referred to flight attendants as his “girls,” I’d gently correct him, all the while hoping he didn’t use that terminology with them. But I knew he said those words not out of malice but simply because he’d neglected to notice—or care about—a change in the times and terms. I transferred that understanding of my dad (and a lot of other feelings, as it turned out) from my father Don to my partner Don, but it didn’t make things any easier. In the highly male-centric business that radio was at the time, not upsetting the apple cart was as much a part of my job description as doing news, reading entertainment or cheerfully bantering with my co-host, our producer and our sharp-witted airborne traffic reporters.
Don retired in 1999 at the age of sixty-five, and as ready as he was to go, I was genuinely sad to have him disappear from my life, because there were good moments and even good days. I never lost my perspective about what he did for me. I learned so much from him, and although not all of the lessons were ones I wanted, they served me well in the years to come.
Sadly, sixteen years after our last show together, we reconnected in the shared role of grieving parents: in 1991, the year my daughter was born, his only son took his life at age thirty-three. Don Daynard’s kindness in reaching out to me when he heard of Lauren’s passing reminded me of and rekindled the warmth I’d felt for this man, despite our vast differences. I have also come to wonder how it is that he kept going, kept performing, when he wasn’t happy at work, and especially in light of the immense grief he was suffering after having lost his son. Of course, we didn’t talk about it at the time; remember, this was a man who idolized John Wayne. You wouldn’t find Duke sharing his feelings over a camomile tea, would you?
I say “tea” like it was an option; it wasn’t. There were two choices for me in those days: coffee and whatever was filling my wine glass or tumbler every evening. You see, for many years, the dull thrum of a hangover was easier to bear at six in the morning than the unpredictability of the atmosphere in the studio. And so, between bouts of therapy and prescriptions for depression, I drank.
I sipped Japanese sake, heated up in sixteen-ounce measuring cups in the microwave (just as ancient tradition would dictate, I’m sure). I gulped wine, always cold and always an oaky Aussie Chardonnay, and later a Pinot Gris or Grigio. But my poison of choice remained the same straight-liquor concoction that had helped numb my pain during those first years in the city: martinis. I savoured the icy thickness of gin from the freezer and the tang of giant olives on a toothpick. I preferred my martinis like my jokes—salty and dirty—and would add half an ounce of olive juice to the gin and vermouth mixture. The brandy snifter had long ago been replaced by a fine crystal martini glass that was as joyful to my senses of touch and sight as the syrupy clear potion it so elegantly held. (Fun tip: A travel coffee mug makes a great martini shaker. Freezes well too! Just don’t actually travel with it.)
I will say at this point that not once did the issue of my increasing self-medication come to the attention of listeners. I’m not in denial (well, at least not about this); at no time during the 1990s did I endanger my career or give less than what was perceived to be 100 percent. The term high functioning could have described me perfectly. Was I as sharp with a comeback or a quip as I would have been had I not imbibed the night before? No. But on the occasions when I was wise to let someone else have the punchline (remembering my place, after all), that dull edge served me well. Perhaps because of the level of alcohol consumption among many radio people, mine escaped the notice of my co-workers, too, until much later on. Did I get drunk at company gatherings? Of course I did—we all did! In fact, it was the person who wasn’t constantly refilling his or her glass who stood out, just as did the non-smokers among us. I wouldn’t be the only one to indulge in a cigar at a ratings party; many were the mornings I was reminded that the cheerful idea to have a cigar is God’s way of saying, “Put down the stogie and the Errol Flynn and go home.” If only I’d ever listened to that voice. It had long been silenced, rendered as useless as the on/off switch that I’m told people without a drinking problem actually have and really do use. What a concept! (Fun tip #2: Mixing Grand Marnier and Courvoisier gives you a drink called an Errol Flynn. A one-time Hollywood heartthrob, Flynn died at fifty, cirrhotic and no longer handsome, but probably with one of those mixtures on his bedside table. “I am what I drink. Cheers!”)
Of course, weekends—without the restrictions of a 4 a.m. alarm and the feelings of remorse, headache and unquenchable thirst that accompanied drinking through the week—were the real time to let my hair down and get my drink on. After all, I deserved it! Whether I was celebrating a great week of radio or refilling the martini or wine glass to forget something or someone who had hurt me, Friday and Saturday evenings all took on a consistent fog; Saturday and Sunday mornings were spent lazily recovering on the couch, often in front of a cottage fireplace.
One therapist I saw, an Austrian native, said that in Canada, cottages were “a place where Canadians go to drink.” She wasn’t wrong. We’d plan our water skiing outings so that I would get the last drive in for whomever wanted to ski before we began serving salt-rimmed margaritas or tart gin and tonics on the lakeside deck. A winter afternoon staple (before wine or martinis) was the Bloody Caesar: a delicious Canadian invention utilizing clam and tomato juice that makes for a far superior version of the more mundane Bloody Mary. A small meal in their own right, our Caesars were constructed with care and perfection, from the celery salt–rimmed glass right down to the pickled bean or celery stalk that adorned each vodka-based drink.
Just as, at age eight, I’d enjoyed rolling my grandfather’s cigarettes and not blinked a judgmental eye, Lauren took great pride in her ability to “build” a perfect Caesar, with a bartender-worthy rimmed glass and just the right amount of Tabasco, Worcestershire, lemon juice and cracked pepper. Lauren’s Caesar could stand up against any professional’s. It’s pretty telling that I never really taught her how to bake o
r even how to cook (I never did the former and rarely did the latter), but she could build a drink. Fortunately, since I never won Mother of the Year, I won’t have to give it back for telling you this. What do they say about confession being good for the soul? Ugh.
Eventually, my morning-after regrets and remorse started to outweigh the welcome, comfortable numbness of the night before. I got tired of feeling even more fatigued than normal for someone who gets up at “the crack of stupid” (we also called it “the butt crack of dawn,” among many other euphemisms for the hours at which morning radio people rise), and of not having the energy to work out and maintain a healthy weight. Even though alcohol made me feel more comfortable in social situations, as well as wonderfully blissed out during my time at home, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that words were coming to mind a little more sluggishly than they should have during the show, when everything was live and immediate. I risked hurting a brain that had served me well and rarely failed me, and I recognized that fact. At home during sober hours, I’d started saying “umbrella” when I meant “elevator,” “dishwasher” when I meant “microwave.” I chalked it up to fatigue and my brain not being on duty, but the truth is, my wires were getting crossed. My husband was starting to notice it too.
What was happening to the woman for whom “be on your best” could have been a forehead tattoo? Well, until anyone other than Rob took notice, I felt I was safe. Maybelline concealer could hide the dark circles under my eyes, and besides, who wouldn’t have eye baggage worthy of Samsonite, working the hours I did?
Did Lauren take notice of my addiction? Mostly no, she told me years later. The only time we talked about my drinking was when she was eleven years old and I told her that “Mommy’s going to quit.” In the evangelical openness some addicts feel when they’re looking at freedom from their habits (and seeking someone to whom I’d have to answer if I didn’t meet my goals), I expressed to her my remorse if she felt that my illness had had any kind of bad effect on her. She said it hadn’t and she was unaware that I had a problem. Lauren did admit to wondering, however, why I was so tired every weekend and just wanted to lie on the couch. Later, I was able to warn her about the dangers of drinking, especially as a child of someone who didn’t have an off switch. As a result, she drank very rarely and, when she did, it was lightly. She had neither the constitution nor the need for alcohol. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t have strong feelings about it.