Drunk Mom

by Jowita Bydlowska

  If my boyfriend is inside the cottage, I have to sneak quick, brutally large gulps of pure vodka in the bathroom. I brush my teeth afterwards and put on extra deodorant so that the smells will block each other.

  When the boyfriend is outside or napping, I drink with my head in the suitcase, right there behind our bed.

  During the day we drive out to different beaches with the big wicker basket with the baby inside it. We are on the east coast of the East Coast and it’s different here than anywhere else I’ve been to before where there are beaches. Here, the beaches are wild, huge, with people barely scattered on them. Unlike the more populated and sunny beaches of the west side, here the weather is capricious and cool so the beach culture is minimal, no loud frat guys with coolers full of beers, never any bikini-model girls. There is lots of fog. If you see people, usually it’s just an elderly, spry couple walking hand-in-hand looking like an ad for a retirement home, or a few local families: sluggish children and their tired moms smoking, not swimming or walking. My boyfriend and I joke—in our big-city snobbishness—that they’re just waiting till it’s time to go home and eat their lunch hot dogs.

  Sometimes there are local teenage surfers, usually boys, who come out even in sweater-and-raincoat weather and throw themselves right in the middle of the black suicidal waves that are frightening to even look at.

  There are some beaches on the east coast where there are no people at all, and a few times we catch ourselves driving by various patches of sand looking for the most populated ones—sometimes we miss having people around. But most of the time we don’t crave company at all, and we are happy setting up our small camp in the pale desert, with the wicker basket on the pure white sand, the ocean open and dark before us and a cold breeze always there under all the sun.

  The baby naps and I nap a lot, mostly sleeping off my mini-hangovers. They’re not real hangovers. I may just for once be getting genuinely tired with all the baby care and sneaking around. My boyfriend makes a lot of comments about how we’re finally able to get proper rest far away from the city.

  The weather is nice most of the time. It brings out the teenage surfers riding nonchalantly on boogie boards and probably praying for some kind of a storm to wipe all of us out, fat moms, and the few tourists, and for the waves to rise again.

  A few times during the holiday I manage to buy some booze when we go grocery shopping. I tell my boyfriend I’ll meet him inside the grocery store but instead I follow him to the liquor store first. He’s a social drinker and likes his beer or wine with dinner.

  As I follow him, the baby is rocked to sleep in his Snugli by my catlike moves. I hide behind SUVs in the parking lot. Then I tiptoe through the sliding door into the liquor store entrance.

  My boyfriend never looks behind him. The baby never makes a noise. I don’t get caught.

  Once my boyfriend leaves the liquor store, I slip inside.

  Later, I pretend to run into the boyfriend somewhere in the cereal aisle, the newly purchased, full mickey safely tucked inside the diaper bag.

  I dispose of empty mickey bottles in the bathrooms of back-road diners.

  I never breastfeed when I drink. I make up some lie about nipples chafing. The baby is fed formula every other night. I drink every other night.

  When I don’t drink, I think about it.

  I go through the day in a half-daze, thinking about it.

  Because I don’t drink as much as I would at home and I generally don’t get too hungover after drinking, only once do I wake up sick enough to vomit into the toilet. When I was in my twenties, this used to be a point of pride. I’d translate from Polish the adage about being tough like a horse.

  But that morning I wake up and it turns out I’m a very small pony. My stomach is upset, my skull is a vise to my pickled brain. Everything is squeezing from inside, begging to be expelled.

  My boyfriend and the baby are still asleep in the bedroom when this happens. Just in case, I puke over my fist to mask the sound.

  That day I sleep extra long on the beach. I forget the sunscreen and the sun is so intense, the redness comes on almost right away. My boyfriend is passed out beside me; the baby is in the wicker basket. We could just lie here on this nice beach and burn to a crisp, all three of us.

  The boyfriend and I rarely fight during those two weeks, and I maintain the balance between tipsy and not-there perfectly well.

  The baby smiles for the first time ever near the end of our two-week holiday. We’ve been waiting for him to smile, talking often about how he is due for it now, at three months old.

  I’m hovering above him when it happens. My hair is long and sun-kissed with wispy ends. I move my head left to right, letting the wispy ends brush oh so gently over his beautiful, serious face. Back and forth. Back and forth.

  Finally, something clicks. His eyes seem to focus, start moving back and forth with the wispy ends. The light is filtering through the window. His brown eyes, my brown eyes, the hair—we’re a pendulum of the sun.

  He smiles. The time stops. The pendulum stops: a baby just smiled for the first time ever somewhere in the world.

  This is why we are all here on this planet, I think to myself.

  We take hundreds of photos of him smiling.

  REGROUP

  When we get home, I start the harm reduction meetings. My boyfriend seems happy about it because he believes in education and therapy—he believes I will get educated enough about my own drinking to the point of stopping drinking. I keep insisting that I’m not that badly off that I would need to go back to AA. I don’t need anything serious, like AA. Perhaps we both believe that I’m not that badly off.

  There are ten of us in the group: three Robs, two Lisas, and a bunch of other clowns. I suppose I think of them as “clowns” because I’m hostile to this situation. And I’m not a clown myself. I’m here just to do some research. These people, on the other hand, need to be here. They are sad clowns. I am not.

  The counsellor, also a type of a clown, looks as if she hasn’t smiled ever—her mouth has years and years of frowning etched into it. She gives us stickers with our names written on them and tells us to tell everyone what we’re doing here.

  We are in a classroom-like room and are, of course, seated in a circle, just like in the movies. I keep thinking: this is for them and not for me. In any event, if the clowns had any expectations of what this was supposed to look like, the hospital has done an excellent job of appropriating. Although I am thrilled to be in the movies. This is a movie.

  Besides the circle, there’s nothing to look at much. There are no paintings or photographs in this room, just us and the chairs and some tables pushed against the walls. The windows face a wall of another building.

  In the beginning, everyone is silent. We look around, all of us, and smile quickly and politely at each other if we catch each other’s eyes. Most of the eyes in here are accustomed to avoiding, so the awkward smiling occurs only a few times, at least in my case.

  Eventually one of the Lisas bursts out that she doesn’t even drink anymore so this program doesn’t apply to her. Ever since her daughter moved back home with her new baby, well, she has realized how much was at stake and stopped drinking entirely.

  No more drinking for her! Ha ha ha. It doesn’t really apply at all, she repeats.

  But I’m doing this—this program—because of the baby, she says. Because it’s … it wouldn’t be … it wouldn’t be fair to him, the baby. If I did. Drink. Yes.

  Lisa won’t meet anyone’s eye; she’s playing with a loose thread coming out of her thick, wool skirt while she recites her affirmations.

  Same with me, says the guy with the Einstein hairdo. Same with me. I don’t even drink anymore. He gives everyone a sad, wise smile.

  Well, good for you. An actor type with giant white runners on his feet shouts enthusiastically. But it hasn’t been the case for me, certainly, he says. Good for you.

  I went out last night, says the actor type. It was my la
st hurrah you could say. I understood that this is it for me. Or I don’t know. I’m in a relationship and my girlfriend—we’ve been together twelve years—gave me an ultimatum. I usually drink Jack. I had some last night—

  The counsellor interrupts him to ask him how much.

  He measures a depth with his hand. Almost an entire bottle from what I can tell. The counsellor, visibly satisfied, nods and writes something down.

  I wonder if I should take Lisa’s approach when it comes to my turn and just make something up. Something about how I’m only here for the preventative measure or some other stupid crap. But I don’t even care enough to lie all the way through.

  I have to watch what I say, however. I was read a statement about confidentiality when I dropped off my form. I remember the words danger and authorities. This is no good. I can’t talk about passing out with Frankie screaming and wet that one time, and my boyfriend finding me.

  I just say that I drink because of the stress of childcare and my life, which is a failure.

  I don’t really attribute my drinking to this. I could talk about the obscene appetite of my wanting, or about the guilt crushing my sobriety, or perhaps about subconsciously wanting to die, not being able to stop. Yet all of that is too abstract, too complicated to explain. I can’t explain it to myself. Why, Jowita? Why? I remember seeing a sticker once: The reason I swear so much is because fuck you.

  But since I’ve been in this movie before, I know that you have to come up with some kind of explanation. Cause and effect. A formula that goes like this: Baby equals stress equals feeling of failure equals drinking.

  So the childcare makes you stressed? the counsellor says.

  You know, like that joke title for a children’s book? Mommy Drinks Because You Cry? That’s me, I say.

  The counsellor doesn’t laugh. Nobody laughs. Lisa looks at me suspiciously.

  The counsellor asks me where I drink. At home?

  (I evaluate how I should answer. No. Not at home. Baby’s at home, can’t be drunk around the baby, can I?)

  At a local bar.

  How much do you drink?

  A couple of pints.

  How many?

  Maybe two. Or three.

  Two or three?

  Three.

  Four?

  No, three.

  The counsellor tries to do something with her mouth that looks … smilish. I want to punch her. But I smilish back at her and she moves on to Lisa number two, who says she drinks to get herself to sleep. That, I think, is a terrible waste of being wasted.

  I keep my mouth shut and look at the clock.

  The last to introduce himself is one of the Robs. He looks like a middle-aged woman with short hair. He’s got a soft chin and big green eyes, a strangely lumpy body and a big ass. He’s the happiest-seeming out of the bunch. For sport, I try to figure him out quickly, before he gets to his story. I guess beers, mean ex-wife, divorced, a dad.

  He says his name and where he’s from. He’s got a French accent. Quebec. Beers, divorced, a dad indeed. Nothing about the mean ex-wife but instead there’s this bombshell: I’m an alcoholic, he says.

  We don’t label here, the counsellor says. She looks like she would like to pat him on the back; she reassures him that he’s no such thing. There are no alcoholics, schizophrenics or manic-depressives; there are just tendencies and behaviours, but no one is ever just his or her condition or addiction. There are so many different aspects to a person, so many different parts that make up an identity.

  The counsellor goes on about this for a little bit and then Rob cuts her off and says, But I identify as an alcoholic. That’s my identity.

  Fine, she says, but there’s a frown on her forehead and I wonder if she’s worried about the rest of us finding out that we too are alcoholics.

  Indeed, as if on cue, Lisa announces that she’s no alcoholic, she doesn’t even drink, you know. Not since the baby. Not—

  Rob sighs and says, But I am. I have to identify. I mean I don’t have to—no one is forcing me—but I choose to. So I’m an alcoholic. I’d be drunk or dead without the meetings.

  Yes, because the biggest joke is that he doesn’t even drink. Hasn’t had a drink for nine months, which is nothing, he assures us; there are people who have been sober for thirty years who still identify as alcoholics. But the real reason he’s here, he says, is because of the outstanding court order.

  I can’t help but wonder if the real reason he’s here, even subconsciously, is that he wants to feel a little superior. I imagine his nine-month-old sobriety is a speck of dirt compared to those thirty-year champions in Alcoholics Anonymous. Here, it must feel priceless to be able to say that he’s an alcoholic who has been sober for longer than all of us added together.

  In a way this place is a toy version of Alcoholics Anonymous. A Mickey Mouse club. A training ground for real group confessionals and serious recovery.

  You clowns think this is difficult, Rob is possibly thinking. You should try doing this sort of thing ninety times in ninety days.

  “Ninety in ninety” is what many new alcoholics do when they first get sober. It is not mandatory but it makes sense to do it. The mornings, afternoons or evenings of drinking get replaced with mornings, afternoons or evenings of church basements and bad coffee and immersion in the bizarre, outdated language of the Big Book, AA’s official credo, first published in 1939.

  And after the first ninety days it doesn’t get that much easier. There are meetings every day, dozens of them throughout the day. Many people in AA will suggest the following math:

  How many times in a week should I go to an AA meeting?

  Well, how many times in a week do you drink?

  Not that many people adhere to this formula, and it doesn’t necessarily guarantee successful sobriety—nothing does, in fact—but it increases the chances of sobriety lasting.

  If you think that AA is for the faint-hearted, for the broken losers of shaky hands, weak spines, think again. AA is rooms full of people who are living completely against their nature—the nature that requires them to drink and die. These are the proverbial fish out of water. And they are walking the earth, many of them walking it for years.

  Unlike this harm reduction group, AA is a continuous program of recovery—there are no deadlines on your sobriety, no goals to set. If you’re ready to go, you go. And once you go, there are people you can call, people you do call when the going gets tough. There are the twelve steps—suggested points on the map of recovery. But you only need to meet the first step to be a part of AA: admitting you are powerless over alcohol and that your life has become unmanageable.

  There are many … questionable aspects of AA too. There can be prayers. There is lots of God. Officially there’s no religion and no leader, but there’s “one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself.” And He does tend to be shoved down your throat.

  This He is referred to as a “he.” That can be a problem for some. Some may also find this god a little too Christian. After all, Alcoholics Anonymous’s twelve steps have their roots in the Oxford Group, a Christian fellowship that believed in confession being a prerequisite to change, the idea that a sinner could completely redeem herself.

  AA is an institution set up and organized by people, so yes, it is imperfect. For that reason it is also full of people you have to put up with. People who have taken AA too far, people who decided that they have a monopoly on salvation. People who advise you on your health, your relationships, your diet. People without medical degrees who will eagerly tell you to get off your medication and pray instead. Who will suggest you read absurd self-help books, do yoga, go to sweat lodges. All of those things can help you live better, of course, but none of them have anything to do with AA. However, sometimes AA can feel like the emporium of all recovery for everything.

  It is not.

  But it is an emporium of sorts. AA refuses to call itself an organization, but it does have a type of constitution called “Th
e Twelve Traditions.” I am breaking one of its traditions right now: I’m telling you about AA.

  Luckily, the most beautiful thing about AA is that even though I am breaking this tradition, I know that I can always, no matter what, go back to “the rooms”—what members call meetings—and that my fellow alcoholics will take me back with open arms and help me get sober.

  Where this harm reduction group is just an evening class on addiction, AA is a full-time university program from which you never graduate.

  Still, right now in this room, Rob seems like the smuggest of them all. Right now, Rob is symbolizing to me why I would never return to AA.

  Back in the Mickey Mouse club, after the introductions we talk about our drinking habits and the strategies we can use to drink less or not drink at all. We look at a chart where a cartoon man is climbing a mountain, falling down, climbing back up, falling down. This is supposed to illustrate how one gets sober. The path isn’t easy: you stumble many times before you get to the top.

  Stumbling or slipping is part of recovery!!!, the cutline under the cartoon announces.

  Which tells me that I could have a drink tomorrow. It’s part of recovery.

  In my pamphlet I change my goal from abstinence to max four drinks per week. Then I go over it with my pen to change the 4 to a somewhat square-looking 8. Better. Better-looking, too.

  Later, we do an exercise where we write down Trigger Situations and Solutions for how to deal with them.

  My triggers: morning, evening, happy, sad, nothing, something.

  You know, Lisa the liar blurts out, when I feel my cravings coming on I can just reach for a book. Not that I have cravings anymore but when I had them, I’d just read a short story by Alice Munro or something like that and poof, the craving is gone. But now with the baby I don’t have as much time but I may still, you know, read a couple of lines here and there if I’m feeling a little anxious or something.