by James Brown
Then there is the other side that surfaces from time to time, the better side when I’m in control of myself and my moods and I take my family out to see a movie or involve the boys in soccer, Little League and wrestling. I can be good even in the midst of my addiction. I can be responsible. It’s within me and always has been. Remember, too, that I work hard. That I’m under considerable pressure and we all get moody now and then. So long as I have a good job, I reason, and money enough left over after the bills to buy my liquor and drugs everything is fine. After all I’m still writing. I’m still publishing, and in my five-year teaching evaluation the chair of my department refers to me as an “outstanding citizen with a record of excellence in and out of the classroom.”
And I actually believe it.
I’m the first to admit that I occasionally drink a little too much, and I know I should quit the speed, or at least cut back, but it’s not as if I have a problem. This is why after a three-day bender, and my wife and I have another big fight, I let you talk me into going to an A.A. meeting. I do it to appease my wife and children. I do it to appease you. The meeting is held in a church in North Hollywood and the place is packed. People I’ve never seen before greet you as if they are your dearest friends. You hug them. You smile. It’s too much for me, these public displays of camaraderie and affection, and the meeting itself strikes me as nothing less than a mass confession.
One after another pours his heart out to the group. I am stunned that anyone in good conscience could bare their feelings in front of so many strangers, and I see them as weaklings. As whiners. The religious overtones, the constant references to God and a Higher Power, put me off. Everything is a “miracle” to these people, from finding a parking space to lasting another day without a drink, and after a while all their stories begin to sound the same. They have lost wives and husbands because of their drinking. They have lost jobs, been jailed and institutionalized. They are housewives and dentists. They are lawyers and hairdressers, carpenters and waiters, clerks and actors and nurses strung out on Vicodin.
If I learn one thing that afternoon it’s that there are a whole lot of others out there more messed up than me and knowing this somehow makes me feel better about myself. I’ve never wrecked a car. I’ve never been busted. I’ve never lost a job. All this goes to show is that I don’t have a real problem with alcohol or drugs. In the car, on the way back to your house, I tell you these things and you laugh.
“Those are what they call the ‘yets’ and it just means you’re lucky. So far anyway. Trust me, they’ll happen if you keep drinking.” You laugh again. “Never underestimate the power of denial.”
I don’t like the tone of your voice. I don’t like how you laugh. You think you know something about me that I don’t and I resent you for it. I am offended because your words are true and I’m not ready to hear them yet. In time I will, but not now. You’re a convert in what I see as a cult and I know better than to argue. What concerns me is you. And I don’t care what it takes. If believing in God gives you hope, if confessing to others helps you through another day, then you need to stick with it. It may not be right for me but it’s clearly working for you and that’s all that matters.
Tell me, then.
What happened?
Why after four years of being clean and sober do you get up out of your seat in the middle of the movie that night and say to your husband that you have to use the bathroom and instead leave the theater and walk across the street to the liquor store? I know the rationalizations. I know my own typical excuses. This time, you think, it will be different. This time you’ll be able to control it. Four years without a drink or a drug proves only one thing—that you’re all better now, absolutely cured. You consider it a test, one you’re certain to pass, and because you’re so certain, you see no harm in opening the bottle and raising it to your lips. You only plan to take one drink and then hurry back to the theater. But one doesn’t prove anything. You need a second. You need a third and after that, in a matter of minutes, you’re not thinking about your husband sitting by himself in the theater waiting for you, wondering where you’ve gone.
There’s a park nearby. It has some picnic tables where you can relax and drink under the cover of darkness. The night is cool and you wish you had brought your sweater but you have the vodka to warm you, so you drink a little faster. You are not there long when a man approaches. The alcohol has clouded your judgment and you have no fear. You offer him a drink. For a while you just talk and pass the bottle back and forth, but when you get up to leave you find out that he wants something more, and he takes it. The police pick you up the next morning wandering naked through the park, and later you tell me that you don’t remember a thing after he dragged you into the bushes. That’s when you blacked out, and this is good, because this is another memory that only brings you closer to that overpass above the L.A. River. Your husband calls me from the hospital.
“Marilyn was raped last night.”
“Oh God.”
Silence.
“Is she all right?”
“How can she be all right after something like this?” he says. “If you mean did he beat her up, no. She’s not hurt that way.”
“I want to see her.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“What’re you talking about,” I say. “She’s my sister, man.”
“She got drunk again. That’s how it happened. She got drunk again and ended up in the park. I don’t want her around drunks and you’re a drunk, Jimmy, you’re a fucking drunk. Don’t call her. Don’t come around. You’re not welcome in our house anymore.”
He hangs up.
Ever since baby Katherine’s death I have blamed your husband for failing you, for feeding your addictions, and now he is turning my logic against me. We are both guilty. We are both somehow responsible but I’m not ready yet to accept my part. All I feel for your husband is anger. He is keeping me from seeing you, he is suddenly self-righteous about his sobriety, and I resent him for judging me even if what he says is true. If I were any kind of brother I would not have let him drive this wedge between us, but I am deep into my own sickness, deeper than I ever imagined possible, and I am of no use to you or anyone in my life. This is how I rationalize it, anyway, why I’m not there for you, why I barely try.
For all intents and purposes my marriage is over. I still love her, she is a good woman, but the damage we’ve done to each other over the years is irreparable, and now I often find myself sleeping at a friend’s apartment or passing out in my car along some deserted mountain road. Anything but come home to another fight. I don’t know how I keep my job. The days just bleed one into another in an alcohol and drug-induced haze. That period of my life is blurred, the memories fractured, incomplete. But somehow in this haze I meet another woman, the woman who will later become my second wife, and if there was ever the slightest chance of rebuilding my marriage it is lost now. The divorce is long. The divorce is bitter, and my children, close friends, relatives and in-laws, everyone seems to take sides. My oldest son has seen me hurt his mother too often and chooses to stay with her. Nate, he’s only three when we divorce and has no voice in the matter. Our middle boy wants to live with me but Heidi files an emergency order with the court stating that because of my alcohol and drug abuse I am an unfit father. If I don’t agree to all her terms and conditions, she threatens to take the children away from me permanently. There will be no shared custody. No visiting rights. “You’ll never see the boys again,” she says. Even you, my sister, condemn me for a deserter, a failed husband, a failed father. This is another reason why we lose contact near the end of your life.
The last time I see you is at a place called the Friendly House on Normandie Avenue on the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles. It is a live-in recovery home and you are there because once you started drinking again you’ve been unable to stop. You’ve gotten another DUI. You’ve passed out in your bathroom and split open your head on the hard porcelai
n sink. Your husband has come home from work and found you in the kitchen, facedown in your own vomit, and another time in the hallway soaked in urine. Your alcoholism has advanced to its final stages, and sobriety is now a simple matter of life and death. But when I visit you at the recovery house you are several months sober, and I have nine days behind me, more consecutive clean time than I’ve had since I was twelve. You look good. I’m still shaky. We sit in the kitchen and drink coffee, a far cry from the earlier days of vodka and cocaine.
“Those first thirty days are a bitch,” you tell me. “But the bloat’s going away and your eyes are clear. You should be proud of yourself, Jimmy. I am.”
I hand you a small jewelry box and you open it up. Inside is a gold cross on a thin gold chain. You smile.
“I haven’t had one of these since I was a little girl,” you say, as you unfasten the clasp and slip it around your neck. “Don’t tell me you’re getting religious in your old age.”
“No,” I say, “I just thought you’d like it.”
“I do.”
“It’s made in Italy.”
I don’t know why I mention this. I guess it’s supposed to matter since we are half Sicilian from our mother’s side but they just hang there, those words, empty of meaning.
Long visits are not encouraged. You have a strict daily schedule of meetings, counseling and chores, and we part on a good note, hugging each other, wanting to believe that we will both be all right. And for the moment that possibility seems real and true. That we can change. Yet inside we are scared because we know this hope is fleeting and that the better life we imagine for ourselves may just be another illusion. The bottle, pills and powders own us and we are fooling ourselves if we think we can survive without them. I make it something like twelve days. You last four months and then, because you’re doing so well, the counselors let you go home for the weekend to be with your husband. But on Monday morning, when you’re supposed to return to the recovery house, you’re too drunk to get out of bed. Your husband is disgusted. Your counselors have had it and won’t take you back.
So you’re on your own now. For a while you double up on your A.A. meetings, call your sponsor five or six times a day and work the twelve steps religiously. But it’s the same old story, you get a day or two sober and then go out again, each binge worse than the last, and eventually, inevitably, you alienate all the people who love and care about you. You have drained all your resources. You have cut all ties. Ruined all relationships. You are now among the living dead who for whatever reasons cannot or will not stop drinking.
This is when your late-night calls begin again, while I’m still going through my bitter divorce, struggling to stay sober and living with the woman who helps me toward this end, the woman I will later marry. I’ve put together three months at this point, and like the others in your life I have run out of patience. Each time you phone you are drunk, full of anger and self-loathing, and you direct it at me because it is eating you up inside. Your husband doesn’t understand you. He never has. You cry over the death of baby Katherine and blame me and yourself for Barry’s suicide. Mom is a petty criminal. Dad is a dumb redneck. You cry over our rotten childhood and tell me you were never loved, never felt love, that it was all a big lie. The rape, you never talk about.
Sometimes I let you carry on. Sometimes I just have to hang up. All the calls are the same except for one, the last, and you’re sober. But when I answer the phone that morning and hear your voice again I immediately assume the worst.
“What do you want?” I say.
“I just called to talk.”
“I’m busy.”
“Doing what?”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t have time to fight right now.”
“I don’t want to fight, either,” you say.
But I don’t believe you.
“I have to go,” I say.
“Jimmy,” you say. “Don’t hang up. Please don’t hang up.”
There’s a long silence. I twist the cord of the receiver around my hand.
“What,” I say. “What do you want?”
“I want to apologize.”
“For what?”
“These last few months. I know I’ve been acting crazy and taking it out on you and everybody else and I want to tell you I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m not any better when I drink.”
“No, it’s not okay. I need to know if you still love me.”
“Of course I do.”
“I love you, too. You know I do, no matter how I act, no matter what I say.”
Another silence passes.
“Can I ask a favor?”
“Maybe,” I say, because I’m still skittish. I’m still on guard.
“Do you mind if your kids spend this weekend with me? I know it’s your time with them but I’d really like to see them again. It’s been a while.”
“Sure,” I say, and when we hang up I feel better about myself and you.
What I do not realize is that this is your way of saying good-bye to them and me. I understand that last weekend with my boys went well, you took them to a carnival near your house, everyone had a good time, and I respect you for this final gesture. I love you all the more for it. But on Sunday, after their mother picks them up, you drink again and begin to rage. Your husband takes the bottle away and empties it into the sink. He hides the car keys. He confiscates your purse, your money and credit cards, and then locks himself in the bedroom. You pound on the door. You scream but he just turns up the TV and you storm out of the house in the heat of another fight.
This is July, the month our brother killed himself, and the night is warm. All you’re wearing is a T-shirt and panties. The overpass on Lankershim Avenue is just around the block, and soon you are there, lifting yourself up to the rail. The Los Angeles River is no river at all but a narrow concrete channel that runs thirty, maybe forty feet below. In the distance you hear the cars moving along the Hollywood Freeway and beyond it you can see the glow of the city lights. The steel rail is cool beneath your bare feet and you feel a warm summer breeze pass along your face. Do you think of baby Katherine? Can you picture your husband and daughter? Do you see me, your brother?
Because I am standing beside you.
The following morning a passerby spots your body and phones the LAPD and soon the patrol cars are on the scene. A police helicopter hovers overhead. The noise and commotion bring your husband out of the house, and because he’s been looking for you, because you’ve been missing for thirteen hours, he hurries to where the crowd has gathered. I find out that same night, from Heidi, who despite our bitter divorce takes me into her arms as she delivers the news: Your sister killed herself. She’s gone. I’m so sorry.
Later, when your ashes are scattered at sea, I learn from your husband that you had talked about taking your life for some time. Had I known, would it have mattered? Could I have made the difference? Marilyn, you know I would’ve tried.
In the beginning the alcohol and drugs bring you relief. They give you courage and confidence and then, slowly, over a period of years, they strip it all away and you spend your final years struggling to fill the emptiness that it’s left inside you. It’s futile, it’s madness, and for you and our brother there is only one way to end the pain. This is the choice you make. I have no right to judge what you are capable of enduring. But in my dreams I am standing beside you on that rail of the overpass above the L.A. River, and I reach for your hand. You look at me and smile.
“Don’t worry,” you say. “There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.”
Then you squeeze my hand and let go and I watch you fall, again and again, as I will for the rest of my life. There is no more pain. No impact. In my dreams you are suspended in midair, the wind rushing up around you, captured in the moment of flight.
Spring 1997
SOUTH DAKOTA
First I feel chilled. Then come the cold sweats and this tingling sensation up and down my ar
ms like ants are crawling just beneath the surface of my skin. Except for that part the symptoms resemble the flu. I run a slight fever, too, and there is definitely nausea. But I keep right on talking, a real trouper. I don’t miss a beat.
If I seem fatigued, or disoriented at moments, it’s only because I flew in a couple of nights before. This explains the bloodshot eyes and the dark circles. As for that gaunt look, everybody knows skinny is fashionable in California. These are the things I want the students to believe but the truth of the matter is much different. I am a visiting writer-in-residence at the University of South Dakota, on leave from my permanent job at Cal State San Bernardino, and this is the first session of the first week of class. The month is March, and outside it is cold. Outside a thin layer of frost and snow covers the school grounds but inside this building, in this classroom, it is stifling hot.
I take off my sweater. Underneath I’m wearing a V-neck T-shirt, an old one, thinning, not long for the rag pile. But right now it’s hard to care about how I’m dressed. The sweating hasn’t stopped and the nausea isn’t going away, either. It comes in waves and the intervals between visits seem to be getting shorter. At some point I get around to the student story that we’re supposed to be discussing.
I know I read it carefully on the plane. The chair of the English department mailed it to me before I left San Bernardino, at my request, this story as well as several others, so that I would be prepared for the first week. No downtime. That’s the way I like it. They are paying me well and I believe that the students deserve their money’s worth. Then, an hour before class, I read it again. Ask me what it’s about now, though, and the best I could manage is a sketchy description of its main character, a young thief. I don’t mean this as a comment on the quality of the story, that I can’t remember it.