by Anna David
“We need to talk,” Rachel says, and I nod.
“You need to start making friends at Pledges,” Rachel says, looking at me sternly. We’re sitting at one of the plastic tables outside a burger stand near her apartment in Culver City after leaving the meeting. There’s something about her that seems almost angry—a sort of schoolmarmish drone has replaced her typical singsongy lilt.
“I have friends at Pledges,” I say. I look up at her. “I have you.”
She looks me straight in the eye. “I’m not your friend,” she says. “I’m your sponsor.”
I feel a bit like I’ve been pummeled in the gut but don’t want to show it. “Okay, Miss Serious. I’ll make some new friends.”
She still doesn’t smile. “Amelia, this is serious. It’s about life and death. And sometimes I think you treat recovery like it’s an accessory—it helped you get your shit together and made you better and now you can go about pursuing your fabulous life again.” She picks up a fry and dips it in ketchup. “But it doesn’t work that way. You can’t show up at alumni meetings when you want, smoke cigarettes outside, and pretend that everything’s going to be wonderful and easy now that you’re getting famous.” She shoves the fry in her mouth, chews, and sighs. “It’s not about incorporating this into your life; it’s about incorporating your life into this.”
I want to object and defend myself but I see she has me so nailed that there’s no use in fighting her on it. Since getting out of Pledges, I’ve basically neglected everything I was taught in there—about how my day-to-day happiness and serenity depended on getting out of myself and being of service to other people, about going to meetings and connecting with the people there.
“Being sober has to be your primary purpose in life or you don’t stand a chance,” she says. “Do you get that?”
“Well…”
“My point is this: if you’re really committed to doing this right, I’d be honored to keep working with you. I think if you set your mind to doing this the way it’s suggested, there’s no limit to the kind of serene life you could live. But if you want to half-ass it, I don’t really want to be a part of it.”
There’s a tiny pause. “I want to do it.” When I say it, I realize I’ve never felt more certain of anything.
“That means sitting down to write about your resentments and fears and being willing to go apologize to the people you’ve hurt because of your disease.”
Every time she’s brought this up before, I’ve somehow diverted her attention away from it—usually by telling a funny story. I’d assumed that I’d been so sly that she hadn’t even realized I’d been purposely distracting her. Writing all this stuff down and having to face my entire past has always sounded wholly unappealing but somehow, right now, I look at it in a different way. I’ve been waiting a long time for people to ask me who I’m pissed at, I think. Possibly my whole life. “I’ll start today,” I say.
“And it means trying to live your whole life according to sober and honest principles.”
I nod.
“And that includes your job.”
I look at her as she polishes off her fries.
“Are you saying I have to quit doing my column?”
She balls up her empty wrappers and tosses them into the nearby trash can—a perfect shot.
“I’m saying that you have to try living your life according to sober and honest principles. In the same way that no one can diagnose another person as an alcoholic, no one can tell you what that should mean to you. It’s for you to decide.”
“Rachel, I want to do this.”
She picks up her keys and stands. “This is a lot to hear all at once. Why don’t you think it over and call me later.”
“But—”
“Call me, Amelia,” she says, as she starts to walk away. “I love you.”
At first I’m sort of pissed. Who the hell is Rachel to suddenly transition from cute, bubbly girl with a pixie haircut to a hard-edged slave driver? But when I get home and crack open the Pledges book for the first time since leaving the place, I start to realize that everything she talked about today is right from this book. And at some point I’d known that. What the hell had happened to my memory?
I continue reading and notice a sentence in the book that talks about how short our memories seem to be when it comes to changing the way our brains work, which is why going to meetings every day, or at least as often as possible, is so important.
The more I read, the more this book begins to make sense, and the guidelines start to sound like the ideal way to live a happy life. I never had any guidelines before, I think. I mean, sure, I’ve heard things like don’t lie and cheat and steal, but this other stuff, about looking for my part in every resentment I have, sounds almost like the exact opposite of the way I’ve been living. Resenting someone is like drinkingpoison and expecting the other person to die, I heard someone say in a meeting once. Another person chimed in that “expectations are resentments under construction,” and everyone laughed, including me. But now I’m really beginning to get it. Most of the things I’d spent most of my life pissed about—my parents not doing something, friends not being supportive, people not loving me enough—came about because I had expected so much from them.
Armed with that epiphany, I take out a notebook and start listing all the people I’m pissed at. As you can imagine, it’s a long list. I’ve heard people suggest that a good way to start is to write down every single person you’ve ever known because chances are that you resent them for something. And for me, that seems highly likely.
So I start by listing Mom and Dad, then friends from grammar school—these petty slights I’ve carried with me over the years—and move on to my life today. I take out old photo albums, dig up old address books, and even join classmates.com to jog my memory. When I start to write down why I resent them, I realize this project will take hours, if not weeks. But I want so much to have my slate cleaned, to get this all out on paper and face who I really am. The more I write, the more I see that I’ve already spent too much time in my life upset and angry.
The pen I’m writing with starts causing an indentation on my right pointer finger and I’m lighting about my twentieth cigarette since I started writing when the phone rings. When we first started working together, Rachel had suggested that I not screen calls because when someone’s calling, it’s probably the interruption I need, whether it feels like it or not. I’d nodded but continued screening, always making sure I answered when she called so she wouldn’t know.
“Hello,” I say, not even glancing at caller ID.
“Sweetie?” I recognize the voice immediately.
“Hi, Nadine,” I say. “What’s going on?” I don’t feel that anxiety I always feel when I talk to her—that I have to be so fabulous, so Party Girl, so “on.”
“What’s going on with you?” she asks, sounding alarmed. “What are you doing home on a Friday night?”
I glance at the clock: 9:30 P.M. I’d absolutely lost my sense of time and space and feel shocked that somehow day ended and night started without any acknowledgment on my part. I’d left Rachel at about noon. Had I actually been reading the Pledges book and writing for over eight hours? And was it really Friday night? I had no idea.
“I’m just home,” I say. “Reading, writing.” I glance at one of my cats, who’s asleep next to me. “Playing with my cats.”
Complete silence on the other end of the phone line.
“Nadine? Are you there?”
“Oh, yes, sweetie. I’m just surprised, that’s all. Not exactly the image I have of our Party Girl on a Friday night.”
“It happens,” I say. “More often than not.”
Again, Nadine doesn’t say anything. She never asked me what happened with Ryan Duran and I never offered up any information. I have the distinct impression that I’m devastating her, which feels wrong but also strangely necessary.
“Well, I was just calling to let you know that we’ve booked your
View appearance for the week after next,” she says. “And also, I have some very exciting news!” Her voice is now about four octaves higher than when she first started talking. “I know there’s been a lot of talk about companies buying the rights to Party Girl and making it into a movie or show. But a little birdie told me that the VP at Ridley Scott has come to Tim with a solid offer. Honey, they want to make it into an HBO series for next season!”
“Really?” I ask. I know I should be thrilled—this is what everyone in Hollywood and beyond fantasizes could happen with what they write—but I feel bizarrely unaffected.
“Sweetie, you don’t exactly sound excited.”
“I am,” I say, trying to muster as much false enthusiasm as I can. “That’s terrific.” I can’t remember the last time I used the word terrific.
“Of course, since only a few columns have come out, they need to wait and read the next couple,” she says. “But he said—his exact words were, ‘If she continues to do what she’s done so far, I can’t imagine why we wouldn’t make the deal.’ Sweetie, they’d want to make you a consulting producer! And you could even be on the show. Tell me, have you thought about acting? There’s no reason you can’t be Party Girl and an actress.”
Something—or rather everything—about this conversation suddenly starts giving me a headache and I know that all I want is to be off the phone and lying down.
“That’s great, Nadine,” I say. “I actually have to get back to what I’m doing but thanks for calling to tell me that.”
“But sweetie—”
I hang up.
30
I spend the next week writing down my resentments, only taking breaks to go to Pledges for meetings. By now, I’m on the last section, where I write down the part I played in each resentment—whether I had overly high expectations or was being competitive or said something nasty before the person yelled at me. It’s starting to become incredibly surreal to remember details about all these things that I’d somehow forgotten or repressed. Yet owning up to my part doesn’t feel shameful; it’s actually a relief because it makes me believe my future can be less messy.
“You don’t need to do it like a speed demon,” Rachel says when I tell her that I’m almost done. “Most people take months. Some people take years.”
“I know,” I say. I’d heard as much. But for some reason, as soon as I started writing, some compulsion deep inside kept propelling me forward at this rapid-fire pace. I didn’t even know if I could stop. It’s like I sensed that if I didn’t take action now, my perspective might change again and I didn’t want to risk forgetting how important it was again.
It was hard to believe what I was learning about myself—essentially, that, except for my grandfather, who used to call me stupid for no particular reason, I played a part in every single resentment I had. I’d either had expectations from people that weren’t met or done something to provoke whatever I was now angry about. Kane, for example, couldn’t have screwed me over if I hadn’t acted completely inappropriate and unprofessional in the first place. Even my grandfather and my parents, whose transgressions against me, I’d always felt, were almost too numerous to mention, were just doing the best they could at the time. If I was too young to have played a part in what they did, my part today was that I was continuing to hold on to the resentment.
I go to a Pledges meeting and share about all the realizations I’m having, and for the first time, I’m not saying things that I hope will get a laugh or demonstrate how articulate I am. I finally understand what people mean when they say that talking about things in a group helps them to make sense of their emotions. And if they were right about that, wasn’t it possible that they were right about a whole lot of other things?
Finally, a few days later, I sit in Rachel’s fern-filled apartment and read her everything I have—an entire hundred-sheet notebook’s worth. And then I read some more. And smoke. And read some more. She nods and smokes with me, occasionally taking notes on a yellow legal pad.
“You must be bored stiff,” I say when we’re getting into our fourth hour.
“Not at all. Remember, you’re being of service by allowing me to hear all this.”
People with the most sober time at Pledges talk a lot about being of service and how listening to someone else talk about their problems takes them out of their own heads, and how almost all the problems we alcoholics have are the same—most of them related to our oversized egos—and how they find themselves giving suggestions that they probably need to hear themselves. To be honest, I’ve assumed that most of them are full of shit. But I’m looking at Rachel and, since she’s a teacher and not an actress and Pledges is always telling us how important it is that we work a program of “rigorous honesty,” I assume she’s telling the truth. So I keep reading and reading and reading, until after the sun goes down and my last page has been turned.
When I’m done, Rachel presents me with a list of my defects, and even though it includes words like “selfish,” “self-seeking,” “manipulative,” and “dishonest,” for some reason it doesn’t make me feel at all bad about myself. It actually makes me feel hopeful that I may be able to conquer the kind of relationship problems I’ve had my whole life, since long before I took my first drink.
“You haven’t been bad,” she says. “Just sick.” She tells me to go home, read through the first part of the Pledges book, and think about these defects.
“It’s that easy?” I ask. “I just think about them and then I’m done?”
“Done?” she asks, laughing. “More like just getting started.”
31
“Amelia, we already went through this—on our hike, remember?” Stephanie says, blowing dust off her keyboard. “You don’t have anything else to apologize for.”
I’m sitting in her office, bizarrely nervous considering I’m sitting in front of someone who I know loves me unconditionally. It’s my first time in the building since the day I fled Absolutely Fabulous, and I know that that’s where I’m going next.
“Please, just listen,” I say. And then I tell her that although I already apologized to her for being selfish, I haven’t changed my behavior at all—I’m still always calling her in the midst of a crisis and then abandoning her as soon as it’s over. I finish by saying, “I haven’t been treating you the way I want to be treated, and I want to start doing that now.”
Stephanie looks completely shocked. “Amelia, I don’t know what to say,” she says after a few seconds of silence.
“You don’t have to say anything,” I say. “Unless there’s something I can do to make up for what I’ve done.”
She shakes her head. “Can I hug you now?”
I nod and we both stand up and embrace. As we hug, I tell her I love her and notice that she’s crying. “You’re foul,” she says and we both laugh.
Next, I go upstairs, walk straight into Robert’s assistant’s office and ask if it’s possible for me to speak to him. His assistant, Celine, looks terrified, like I may be on the verge of pulling out an Uzi, but Rachel had told me that I wasn’t allowed to react to anyone’s behavior during this apology tour. I was just supposed to be loving and take whatever was dished out.
“Um, hang on,” she says, scooting quickly out of her office and just as speedily into Robert’s. As I stand there, Brian walks by, his head down as he reads a fax.
“Brian,” I say, and he looks up. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Not looking terribly surprised, Brian nods just as Robert opens his door, so we walk in and take the exact same seats we had the day I was fired. I waste no time—launching directly into how sorry I am for being such a self-absorbed, entitled prima donna. I apologize for acting inappropriately with the people I interviewed, for not respecting the people above me and the rules, for having a sense of entitlement borne purely out of insecurity, and finally for doing coke at work. I end by saying that I thought I deserved to be fired and then something entirely unplanned escapes from my mouth. �
�I’m actually really grateful it happened,” I say, “because it helped me get to where I am now.”
“Well, I never…” Robert says, and then lapses into the muteness that seems to be his trademark. But for the first time since we met, he’s actually looking at me with kindness.
Brian glances from Robert to me and then breaks into a smile. “I’m proud of you,” he says.
The rest of my apologies go as well as can be expected. I call Chris, ask if we can meet for coffee and, at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Beverly, explain that I took out my own shame about my wild behavior on him and couldn’t ever be direct with him about it. I also apologize for mocking him and Mitch in my column. He nods, informs me coldly that he still thinks I’m a bitch, and all I can do is say, “You may be right.” Rachel had advised me to use those words if I ever felt like I was about to react negatively to someone while I was apologizing.
I show up at Chad Milan’s office and his assistant at first tells me he doesn’t have time to see me. Just as I’m getting up, though, Chad wanders out to the hall and says he wants to hear what I have to say just to satisfy his curiosity. I end up telling him—here in the halls of CAA, with about a trillion suits wandering by every millisecond—about my addiction and recovery. Rachel had said that I didn’t need to go and explain that I was an alcoholic to every last person I spoke to—that, in fact, it could be considered a cop-out because I might try to use that as an excuse for my behavior—but for some reason, this is how I explain it to Chad. I add that this in no way makes me feel like I’m entitled to some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card but I just wanted him to know that I think he’s a nice guy and deserved to be treated better. He doesn’t exactly throw his arms around me, but he doesn’t have me escorted out of the building, either.