Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife

by Brenda Wilhelmson

  [Tuesday, September 9]

  Sara came over this morning and I told her I’ve been feeling very bitchy toward Charlie. I resent that he’s a workaholic. I resent that everything to do with the house and kids is on me. I resent that he wants to live in his little work bubble and have me do everything else. I feel like a single mom with financial support—which is better than being a single mom without it. Kat is a single mom and she’s got it rough. I have friends who are married to control freaks, too. And when I think about my two grandmothers, I thank God I don’t have their lives.

  My mother’s mother, Mary, gave birth to fourteen children on her dairy farm. Two died as young children, and she raised the other twelve in a house that was heated by one wood-burning stove and had no indoor plumbing. She washed dirty diapers and clothes by hand, grew and canned her own vegetables, and slaughtered and plucked chickens for dinner. My grandmother hardly ever stepped foot off her farm.

  My father’s mother, Alice, had an Angela’s Ashes kind of marriage. My grandfather drank with his friends after work and spent most of his money in taverns. My grandmother had to hunt him down on paydays and grab what she could before it was gone. When my dad and his three sisters were all enrolled in school, my grandmother got a job as a school lunch lady.

  Comparatively, my life is good. I dismiss my negative feelings and problems and tell myself I’m a whiny jerk. But the same shit keeps coming back at me. I keep getting twisted up about the same old stuff.

  [Thursday, September 11]

  I drove up to Minocqua with Van and Sturgis. Paula and her family have been vacationing at the cabin with my parents for a week, and I’m dropping off Van and the dog because Charlie and I are leaving for Budapest on Monday. I’m going to stay a couple of nights and drive home on Saturday.

  [Friday, September 12]

  My father posted an ad to sell his fishing boat, and this afternoon a couple and their adult son came by to look at it. My mother never liked my dad having this boat. She couldn’t see why he wouldn’t just motor around the lake in the rickety piece of crap the other cabin owners use. All morning, before the prospective buyers showed up, my father was unhappily lost in thought. Periodically he’d comment that he needed to sell the boat so my mother wouldn’t have to sell it when he was dead or dying. After lunch, the couple and their son showed up, bought the boat, and drove away with it. My father looked miserable. He looked at me and frowned. My mother walked through the living room and he looked at her disgustedly. “I’m regretting it already,” he said and shook his head. He spent the rest of the afternoon drinking. By evening, he was in a nasty mood.

  During dinner, I made small talk and said, “Charlie’s taking Max to Lakeside tomorrow. Charlie’s brother, Chris, and little Charlie are going, too. It’s good they’re hanging out.”

  “You never invite me to Lakeside.”

  “Yes I have,” I snapped.

  “Why are you going to Budapest?” my father asked. “What’s there to do there?”

  “Uh, let’s see, visit a beautiful, former-communist city,” I said sarcastically. “Experience another culture. See the world. If we had enough frequent-flier miles for Max, we’d bring him, too.”

  “You’d take him out of school for a week to go there but you won’t take him out of school for a week to come here?”

  “There’s no comparison,” I snapped. “Budapest would be a broadening experience. Max has been coming here for years. He was here this summer. He should come again and miss a week of school?”

  My father snorted and no one spoke for a while.

  Later, after Paula and I put our kids to bed and the grownups were sitting around watching TV, my dad blurted out, “You girls want our Minocqua time shares? You’ll have to pay the yearly taxes and maintenance fees and let your mother come up whenever she wants to.”

  “Of course!” Paula responded gleefully. “I definitely want the place.”

  I looked at my mother. She was staring straight ahead at the TV saying nothing.

  “I only hear one of you saying you want it,” my father said, looking at me.

  “Have you discussed this with Mom?” I asked him.

  “No.”

  “Maybe you should before you offer us your shares.”

  “Well, we definitely want it,” my sister said, looking at her husband.

  My father said nothing. My mother said nothing. My brother-in-law, Rick, said nothing.

  “Really, we want it,” my sister said.

  [Saturday, September 13]

  My dad was watching a hunting show on TV this morning when I got up. The hunters were in South Africa. I’d spent three weeks in South Africa in December and January of 1987 and 1988. My then-boyfriend was from Johannesburg and we spent a week on safari, a week at the beach, and a week in Johannesburg with his family. I sat down next to my father and watched the show for a couple of minutes.

  “You and Mom should go there this winter,” I said. “It’ll be summer there. It’s fabulous. You should go while you’re feeling good.”

  My dad nodded and kept watching the show. I packed my bag and threw it in the Jeep. When the kids were awake, we piled into our vehicles and had breakfast at Paul Bunyan’s. I thanked my parents for watching Van and the dog and gave Van a big hug and kiss and left.

  [Sunday, September 14]

  Charlie’s high school buddy, Sean, and I went to a meeting this morning. He mentioned wanting to get sober again when Charlie and I had dinner with him and his wife back in February.

  “It’s been pretty bad,” Sean said as we drove to the meeting. “It’s a pot problem this time. I’ve been smoking every day all day for the past three months and I can’t stop. I’ve been feeling like I’m going crazy, literally nuts, so I know it’s time to do this again. You know I had a coke problem a while back, right? I haven’t picked that up again, but I’m binging on alcohol, and this pot thing I’ve always done. But lately I’ve been smoking first thing in the morning and throughout the day until I go to bed. Then I lay in bed unable to sleep with my heart hammering and crazy thoughts racing through my head.

  “When you and Charlie and Marcy and I went out to dinner in February and you told me you were sober and going to meetings, I was jealous of you,” he continued. “You got the monkey off your back.” Sean sighed and looked defeated. “I gotta stay away from my other high school buddies,” he said.

  “That’s probably a good idea,” I agreed. Most of Charlie and Sean’s high school buddies are affluent drunks and addicts who never grew up.

  We went to the meeting and before we parted ways, I told Sean that Charlie and I were leaving for Budapest tomorrow, but that I hoped to see him at meetings when I got back. I wonder if I will.

  [Monday, September 15]

  I called my mother this morning to check on Van before leaving for Budapest. She told me a shitty little story that brought up all sorts of resentments for me. I believe my mother shared this story to gauge my reaction, to see if what she did was okay, because I think deep down she knows what she did was wrong.

  My mother told me Van said he wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She made him one and when they sat down to eat, Van told her he wasn’t hungry. So my mother said she made Van sit at the dining room table for one hour until he ate his sandwich.

  “I showed him who’s boss,” my mother said.

  “I don’t like what you did,” I told her. “Don’t do that again.” I wanted to cry. I wanted to shake her. I wanted to drive to Wisconsin to pick up Van and bring him home, but I was leaving the country in a few hours.

  “He didn’t cry,” my mother said. “He just kept looking down at his sandwich and looking at me with a sad face. Finally, after an hour, he ate his sandwich and even licked the jelly off his fingers. He said it was good.”

  “You should have put the sandwich in the refrigerator and given it to him later,” I said.

  “Well, he needed to eat. It was after one o’clock, and he hadn’t had lunch.
”

  “He’ll eat when he’s hungry. If he doesn’t feel like eating, don’t force him.”

  I got off the phone and cried. I remembered the day I bought a chocolate bunny after school and when my mother saw it, she said, “You didn’t ask me permission. Give it to me,” and she whipped the bunny into the garbage.

  My mother often pulled my long blond hair into two tight, painful ponytails. I started pulling my hair loose at school, but my mother didn’t appreciate that. “I put those ponytails in your hair and I expect to see them when you walk out of school,” she said. A few days later, I pulled my hair out of my ponytails and got spanked for it.

  When my mother spanked me, she used a wooden paddle that used to have a red rubber ball attached to it by a rubber string. It used to be my toy before she ripped the ball and string off and began using it to punish me.

  I pictured Van, head hung low, looking up at my mother’s tight-lipped glare and eventually eating that rotten sandwich.

  At three o’clock, I picked up Max from school and we packed his suitcase. I gave him a portable CD player and let him pick out a bunch of my CDs to take to Liv’s. I gave Max a great big hug and said, “I’m really going to miss you, Buddy.”

  “I’m going to miss you, too,” he said.

  “I’ll be back before you know it, probably before you want me to. I know you’re going to have fun at Seth’s house.”

  “Yeah, it’ll probably be fun,” Max said.

  I took Max to Liv’s and we carried his things to the guest bedroom. Max sat down on the bed, put his headphones on, and began listening to CDs. We kissed good-bye, and Liv walked me out the front door.

  Liv smiled. “He’s going to be fine,” she said. “He’ll have a good time. Don’t worry about him. Seth’s so excited that Max is staying here.”

  “Thank you so much,” I said. “I really appreciate you.”

  I went to the airport, my plane took off, and I was on my way to Budapest.

  [Tuesday, September 16]

  One of the travel guides I’ve been reading warned that the taxis in the taxi queue are notorious rip-offs and recommended calling a cab company. So after I got my luggage, I changed some American money for Hungarian forint and spent several minutes staring at a pay phone trying to figure out how I was going to do that. Fortunately, no one else needed to use the phone while I stood there looking like a dolt. I put some money in and dialed. The phone rang and rang. I was about to hang up when someone answered in Magyar.

  “Uh, hello. English?” I said.

  “Yes. Little,” the woman answered.

  By the time I got off the phone, I was pretty sure I’d reached a taxi company and fairly certain a cab was coming. I yanked the handle up from my suitcase and rolled it to the reserved taxi stand. I watched other tourists hopping into the rip-off taxis and felt smug. Several minutes passed, and a swarthy gray-haired man walked toward me and motioned for me to get into a cab that was parked across a median two lanes over. I got in and arrived at the hotel. Charlie was in the room waiting for me.

  “How much did you pay for your cab?” I asked him right away.

  “About 5,500 forint,” he said.

  “Ha! I paid 3,600,” I said.

  Charlie had paid ten dollars more than me.

  “I’m starving,” I told Charlie.

  “The concierge recommended a restaurant nearby,” Charlie said. “We have a reservation. Let’s go.”

  The restaurant, Nostalgia, was gorgeous. It was art nouveau with domed ceilings, arched windows, and sunken and raised dining rooms. The walls were pink and trimmed with elaborate white moldings. Huge chandeliers hung from the ceiling. A gypsy trio played music from a corner. And the food was delicious: crusty rolls with herbed butter, fish soup with hot paprika paste, grilled goose liver and apples in plum sauce, and for dessert, a dense wedge of a ricotta-like cheesecake laced with raisins and topped with an apricot sauce. Charlie had a gin and tonic and a beer. I looked at the other tables and their sparkling crystal wine decanters and glassware. It actually didn’t bother me. Huh.

  [Wednesday, September 17]

  Charlie attended a conference today but before he trotted off, we walked around the city a bit and found Café Gerbeaud, which was highly recommended in guide books for coffee and pastries. Like Nostalgia, Gerbeaud was extravagantly lovely. Charlie had a big puffy cheese pocket and I had a chestnut croissant. They were heavenly. I walked Charlie back to the hotel for his conference and started off on my own.

  Before I’d left the states, I checked out five travel books from the library and cross-referenced their recommendations. Soon after I left Charlie, I stumbled on a tourism office and picked up a detailed map of the city, a brochure for organ concerts at St. Anne’s church—which the guidebooks said were fabulous—and an opera house schedule. I began perusing one of the guidebooks I brought with me. A nearby attraction I’d highlighted was an ancient train that was on display in a subway. I descended a flight of stairs into the subway and saw nothing. There was a short escalator and I rode it down to the next level. Nothing. I walked across a platform to the top of another down escalator and stepped on. Holy shit! It was the steepest, tallest, longest, fastest escalator I’d ever seen. If the escalator had been a building, it would have been something like twenty stories high. My hair flew behind me as I plummeted hundreds of feet down a seemingly endless gray chute at what appeared to be a thirty-degree angle. Halfway down, I began feeling dizzy and nauseated. If I tripped or was pushed, I was a dead woman. The handrail was moving at a slower rate than the stairs and I adjusted my grip. I looked across at the people flying up the up escalator and started to giggle. It was a ridiculous wild ride that smacked of the communist era. I got off the escalator and in front of me was a train platform but no antique train. Screw it. I stepped on the up escalator and watched people flying past on the down one. A mother and her daughter, a girl about Max’s age, were hurtling toward the train platform below. It made me wince. I got off and took the short escalator up to the next level. I walked toward the stairway and a man began yelling at me in Magyar. I quickened my pace and the man ran in front of me. “Ticket, ticket!” he shouted. I took out my guidebook and pointed to the paragraph of the antique train.

  “You need ticket!” he shouted. “Passport!”

  “I didn’t ride the train,” I said. I tapped the guide book with my finger. “I was looking for the old train.”

  The man began aggressively moving toward me, weaving from side to side, backing me toward a wall. “Passport, I need passport!” he demanded. “This is fine!” He flapped a book of tickets in my face.

  I looked at the two laminated ID badges hanging from a cord around his neck and hoped he was legitimate. I fished around in my purse and handed him my passport.

  “Where do you buy a ticket?” I asked. “I never saw a ticket booth.”

  He swept his arm toward a tiny booth in a dimly lit corner. He waved his arms over an almost-worn-off red line painted across the width of the floor. “Need ticket to cross,” he said. He scribbled up my fine and demanded money. I pulled a bill out of my wallet and handed it to him. He handed me some change and my passport and left. I walked out of the station.

  Budapest is two cities: Buda and Pest. Buda is the old side, Pest is the new side, and they are separated by the Danube River. I walked the Pest side, which is full of impressively ornate buildings, and popped into a health food store and bought a wedge of eggplant pie for lunch. I carried it out in a brown paper bag and ate it on the steps of the Hungarian National Museum. I entered the museum and viewed the Hungarian history of Turkish occupation, Hapsburg rule, Nazi occupation, and communist rule. I headed to the opera house and bought two front-row tickets to the ballet for Saturday night. I walked back to the hotel, freshened up, and changed for dinner.

  Charlie showed up and we walked down to the Danube River and boarded a boat aglow with festive white lights for a conference dinner cruise. We were directed to the top deck wher
e waiters dressed as monks, turbaned Turks, and Hungarian folk dancers served cocktails on silver trays. I sipped water for an hour and stood next to Charlie as he schmoozed with clients. Music began floating up from below and people started streaming down the boat’s stairwells to go inside.

  Two floors down, waitstaff had begun serving people food from three stations: traditional Hungarian, medieval times, and Turkish. Hungarian folk dancers skipped and twirled. Dancers dressed in medieval garb circled. Belly dancers jiggled next to the Turkish food.

  Upstairs, white linen-covered tables were topped with miniature mirrored staircases supporting bite-sized Napoleons, chocolate tortes, and orange sponge cakes. It was heaven. I stuffed my face, and Charlie and I climbed back up to the top deck of the boat for a gorgeous view of Budapest all lit up. As the boat cruised down the Danube, warm wind floated through my hair, and I was thrilled I wasn’t numb from booze. The night was glorious. Everything was vivid and sharp. I’m not going to wake up tomorrow with a hangover.

  [Thursday, September 18]

  I went to the enormous, gorgeous, and opulently tiled Central Market for a Hungarian cooking class arranged by the conference for spouses of attendees. We made Hungarian goulash and for dessert, thin pancakes stuffed with raisin-laced sweet cottage cheese. I ate lunch and ditched the other spouses who were getting on a tour bus for a tour of Pest, which I’d seen yesterday on foot. I hung out at the market and started shopping. I toured stalls filled with lace tablecloths, gaudy crystal goblets, touristy imitations of Herend china, and real Herend porcelain, which the Queen of England is rumored to drink tea from. I bought Max a petrushka doll of the American presidents and Van some wooden animal jigsaw puzzles. The shops rimming the walls of the top two floors of the market overlooked the ground floor, which was loaded with fruit and vegetable stands, pastry shops, meat markets, and paprika kiosks. Locals grocery shopping scurried from stall to stall. I made a mental note to come back when I was hungry and took a leisure walk back to the hotel to get ready for tonight’s putska.