Drunk Mom

by Jowita Bydlowska

  Maybe she will have more luck with it.

  I lay the book on my sister’s lap and tell her to look for it. Find the stuff about rats and cocaine, I urge her. Check the index in the back for rats and cocaine. Read the whole book. Have it. You can borrow it. No, have it. It’s yours.

  She says she has no time to read huge books about addiction. She is in grad school.

  Hold that thought, I tell her and run upstairs.

  Upstairs, it is quiet. The baby is sleeping.

  I check on him to make sure.

  I also check in the drawer where I keep the diapers.

  Once I check on the baby and behind the diapers, I run back downstairs to talk at my sister some more. I cut her off when she starts talking gibberish again. When am I going to get better? What’s wrong?

  Let me finish, let me finish, I keep saying to her, as if “let me finish” was some kind of abracadabra that would give me an infinite right to go on and on and make her shut up.

  Somewhere in the back of my drunk’s reptile brain I know that I’m being obnoxious, but I have so much to teach her. As her older and more experienced sister it truly is my duty to teach her about life. She has to learn about addictions. I am probably an addict. Though I’m almost sober now. But I want someone to understand. Is this too much to ask?

  I speak in capital letters, feeling my conviction fill me up as if I were a balloon. I mention the rats and the cocaine again because I don’t think she got it the first time. It is imperative that she understands how those things work.

  So. The rats and cocaine.

  The rats that lived in dire conditions were way more likely than the rats that lived in the so-called Rat Park (Rat Park. I remember the name of the experiment, so I shout it) to self-administer drugs. Drugs didn’t cause addiction. The past did. Circumstances.

  I grab the book from her lap.

  The text seems more cooperative now. I even find the quote I’ve been looking for and kept missing for some reason. I read it triumphantly to my sister: “Only severely distressed animals, like severely distressed people, will relieve their distress pharmacologically if they can.”

  My sister says, Okay, and then, out of the blue: Are you drinking? Are you drunk now?

  You’re such an idiot, I tell her.

  She really is.

  I run upstairs, back into the baby’s room. I fish the mickey out of the diaper drawer—it is almost empty now, crap—and take another swig.

  COSMOPOLITAN

  There is a vague idea in my head about a woman that I want to emulate. In my delusion, I believe that I’m qualified to practise being her, precisely because I drink.

  This woman, she travels first-class and stays at boutique hotels. She is unapproachable, on the verge of being mistaken for a former model, or, if you aren’t entirely convinced about her beauty, the way she carries herself at least suggests she’s important. This woman is very much in control of herself and her confidence is natural, not cocky, but if you find it a bit cocky she certainly doesn’t care what you think.

  This is the woman who’s going to Montreal for a fun weekend. It’s fall but it’s still warm out, perfect weather for sophisticated travel. I booked her trip months ago. It was a birthday gift from my boyfriend who is staying home with the baby while the woman travels.

  Walking, I make her legs line up one behind the other, making her pelvis bounce just a tad too much. You have to look once you notice her—you have to look one more time to make sure you aren’t missing something. And then you are left feeling that you did, indeed, miss something.

  She walks into the lobby of the hotel carrying a small, sexy suitcase packed only with a little black dress, high-quality stockings, lingerie and stilettos. In the lobby, the woman gives the receptionist my boyfriend’s credit card and in exchange receives a card key and complimentary art-museum passes given to all the guests.

  The elevator going up plays tranquil music. The walls are wallpapered and mirrored; there is information about yoga classes, the spa and other services. It is unclear whether there is a pool in the hotel.

  I look back at the woman’s reflection in the mirror. Her eyes are a little tired and there are bags underneath them. The baby had been waking up throughout the night for the last few nights straight, prior to this trip. Four, five times a night. The breasts feel full of milk. My breasts feel full of milk. I milked myself on the train earlier but the milk is now back, expanding inside them, probably starting to leak out and right into my brand-new lace bra.

  And like that, I am no longer her, I am me again, a mom with leaky tits.

  The hotel room is a heavy-wood wallpapered coffin with an enormous bed. I unpack the little suitcase and check out the tray of heavily priced objects in shiny packages on the desk. Dental dam? Never seen one in a hotel before. Never seen one, period.

  I sit on the bed and watch a show about renovating houses while I milk myself.

  After I shower and dress, I’m ready to be her again.

  I take some pictures of her. On the camera’s viewscreen they show just the right amount of blurry gold hair, black dress, fuchsia tights and crossed legs against the dark bed covers. It all seems intriguing, illicit. Blurry enough to miss the dark circles under the eyes.

  She walks out of the hotel in search of a bar. Behind the hotel, the streets seem populated with drunk children. All the bars she passes look horrible. Even the more elegant ones are occupied by the sort of male who likes to show off the top of his chest and the sort of longhaired female who is often blond and tanned as if she spent her summers in a warm place where the air smells of coconut.

  There is loud music everywhere and people are puking on street corners.

  The men catcall and look at the woman even with all the fresh flesh around her. She wants to be left alone, however, so she walks briskly and grows more and more frustrated, trying to find the perfect place to drink.

  There is, finally, a horrible but relatively empty dark pub where I find a quiet corner and knock down four pints in a row. I’ve never had this kind of beer, Amsterdam Blonde; beer isn’t exactly what she should be drinking but I am a beer drinker so I make her disappear. She can come back tomorrow when I have more time to plan what to do with her and her sophisticated tastes. The TV is on in the corner, there are American accents all around me, and nobody is looking at me, except for the bartender—which is all that matters anyway.

  I drink the beer fast. I don’t want to stay here for too long—there’s too much to do outside.

  But I’m in the wrong part of town to do things. I should be closer to St-Denis. I’m not familiar with the city but surely I can find a place more interesting than this pub. So I leave, and wander the awful streets around Rue Ste-Catherine, looking inside bars, trying to find one where I can finish off my evening, drink myself sober.

  I finish my evening at a Korean restaurant where I have to buy food to go with my beer. I ask for soybeans. The kid serving me seems scornful when I order a third beer. He asks me in broken English if I want anything else to eat besides soybeans.

  Why? Is he worried about my health? I hate these stupid soybeans but no, I don’t want anything else. And I hate this beer, as a matter of fact. And this restaurant. Does he think I want to be here? Really? That out of the entire, beautiful city of Montreal, I picked this basement to spend the rest of my night—here, where nobody seems to be speaking English?

  No more food, I’m fine, I bark.

  He blinks at all of this and bows his head and walks away.

  I’m alone at the table. The other four tables are jammed with beautiful Asian kids giggling and flirting among themselves, ignoring me completely. Perhaps they are giggling at me the entire time.

  The next morning I wake up sore and angry at the world in my ridiculous huge bed. The sheets are stained with milk.

  The second night she is much more prepared. First of all, she bought a nice bottle of wine earlier, which she drinks in the hotel room while watching a TV sh
ow about adopted children reuniting with their biological parents. It’s a good show.

  She dances a little in the small room, as much as she can, really, in this room. She has to manoeuvre around the bed. Dancing, she thinks about the time long ago when she used to date a very rich guy who would take her to hotels like this. He would leave at one in the morning to drive back to his wife and daughter. And she would sometimes wake up too early, very thirsty suddenly, and she would crack open the mini-fridge. Those hotels were like this one—all wood, sometimes all glass, ambient techno in the elevators and faux Deco decor.

  When she finishes her bottle of wine, she puts on more lipstick and goes downstairs to the hotel restaurant, which is arctic blue and black with skating-rink-shiny surfaces that seem to be made out of onyx. She orders a glass of wine. The glass costs more than the bottle she drank upstairs but she can’t think that way—people like her don’t have to think that way. It never occurs to them to be thrifty.

  The girl behind the bar is very beautiful. The woman tells her this and the bartender girl says thank you. The woman orders another glass of wine and this time leaves a larger tip. The bartender seems so nice. The woman feels like talking so she starts a conversation with the bartender. It turns out that the bartender is a student at McGill, finishing the same degree as the woman’s younger sister. What a coincidence. The bartender has smooth, pharaoh-like features, accented perfectly by only a hint of makeup.

  The woman’s purse vibrates and rings.

  It’s my boyfriend: How is Montreal?

  Montreal is great. I’m having so much fun, I say and gulp the last few drops, gesturing to the beautiful bartender for another one. How is the baby?

  He’s good. A little cranky. He slept in our bed last night. I couldn’t get him back to sleep so I let him. I guess all the sleep training just went out the window.

  My boyfriend has some people over. Women friends. I ask him to list them. Among them is the friendly cougar who’s been pursuing him for months, someone he has had a drink with before (business reasons, of course), and this bothers me, but I’m suddenly in such a generous spirit I almost tell him that he could sleep with her if he really wants to. Why the hell not? People should be allowed to bang whoever they want. I know she wants to bang him. I know men like to sleep with people who want to sleep with them. So why not?

  Stop being crazy. How was your day? he says, interrupting my thoughts.

  I have a big sip of my wine and tell him about my hotel room and about the boring art I saw earlier. I don’t tell him that I had been counting down the minutes until it would get dark and I could give myself permission to get drunk.

  We miss you, Mommy, he says and puts the baby on the phone. I listen to the squeals and piglet-like grunting and I imagine my baby boy’s little face with its giant inquisitive eyes, and his fists sometimes moving up to his eyes involuntarily, possibly trying to scratch them out.

  I look at the rows of bottles in front of me. All the colours of glass and all that liquid; potions and lotions to make you big or small. The bartender’s back is turned to me now—she is pouring amber liquid into a row of tumblers. Her hair is black, shiny like the onyx surfaces around me. She probably wears matching microfibre-and-lace underwear.

  One of the male waiters joins her behind the bar and she goes on her tippytoes to whisper something into his ear. I wonder if they are sleeping together. How do people ask to sleep with each other nowadays? I wonder how I would ask him to sleep with me.

  I miss you too, guys, I say.

  He wants to grab the phone, my boyfriend says. Oh, he’s grabbing it, trying to hold it against his ear. Frankie! I hear the baby make a giggling sound.

  Frankie. I can’t think about Frankie right now. Hello? Hello? I say loudly into my cell.

  My boyfriend says, Hello, hello, hello. What’s wrong? Can you not hear me okay? I can hear you fine.

  Hello? Hello? I say again.

  Hello? I can hear you perfectly clearly.

  Hello? Hello? I hang up.

  He is ruining my buzz.

  This time she doesn’t go behind the hotel, back to the college-kid purgatory. Instead, she walks along Sherbrooke, passing the handsome facades, display windows and work-of-art staircases of expensive shops. She passes a couple of hotels with famous names. There are very few people out at this time. It seems that everyone has already retired for the night. A few hotel restaurants that she passes seem barely filled. It’s past suppertime. It’s getting chilly. It’s Sunday.

  She realizes that she is a little hungry, which is annoying. She should’ve had something to eat before. Maybe even a sandwich that she could’ve smuggled into her room like the nice wine. Nobody needed to know.

  She stops in front of a couple of restaurants and reads the menus. The prices are ridiculous. Yes, she wants to treat herself, and women like her eat alone in expensive restaurants all the time, but this is just a rip-off. It’s time to catch a cab and go down to St-Denis. There, at least, people are out on the streets and there are depanneurs everywhere, still probably selling alcohol at this hour.

  One more place to check out. Last night on her way to the hotel she walked by this place and there was a big party inside a big white tent set up in the courtyard. People were all dressed up, and there were cameras inside, and a live band. There was wrought iron, possibly a fountain in the middle of all this, palm trees. It seemed like something out of The Great Gatsby.

  The place is way less lively now.

  She walks up to the restaurant’s massive front door with curlicue knobs. The menu is framed in an intricate art nouveau frame.

  The door opens and a man says hello.

  Hello.

  Would you like to come in? He is dressed in a suit. He’s older than her but not by much. He’s okay to look at, tanned and dark-haired, which she likes, but somehow not her type at all. He reminds her of a nice guy she went on a date with once, and kissed out of politeness.

  The restaurant is empty behind the man.

  She isn’t sure what to make of it.

  We’re closed but you can come in. I saw you walking up and I was hoping you’d come in. I love your tights.

  She looks down. Her fuchsia legs. Behind her, the street is deserted. Why the hell not?

  This is how magic happens, she thinks. You have a drink or two and magic just happens.

  The man leads her to a table and explains that he is the owner of the place. He says, I want to cook for you. It’s not every day that such a beautiful woman just appears at my door.

  She laughs.

  Minutes later, she’s seated at a white table, suddenly surrounded by eager-to-please waiters, and the man is telling her about different wines they have and what is good. She tries to remember what kinds of wines are considered good. Her mind is blank and a little whirly. She tells him to choose. I trust you, she says, and that seems to please him.

  What would you like to eat? I can make you a beautiful salad.

  I love salads, she says.

  It shows. You have an amazing body, he says.

  It’s a little cheesy but she says thank you. Someone like her would always say thank you.

  He jokes with the waiters, who call him “boss” and who are told to take out salad ingredients and leave them out for him in the kitchen. He wants to talk about her tights again. Her dress is beautiful too. What is she doing here, all by herself?

  The wine is really good.

  There is more of it.

  She tells him he looks like an old friend.

  A good friend? he wants to know.

  An ex-boyfriend, she lies.

  By then the surroundings are becoming seriously blurry. He looks like her ex-boyfriend, sure. Anybody could look like—or be—anybody. She keeps forgetting the man’s name and once calls him by the name of the guy that he reminds her of. He jokes about having his feelings hurt, reminds her of his real name.

  Later on a college-age kid joins them. He’s wearing a pink Lacoste sh
irt. He was playing golf all day, he explains to the restaurant owner. He says he is enjoying himself after breaking off his engagement. They drink to that. The kid is the restaurant owner’s nephew. They are Italian.

  She calls them mafia and the restaurant owner laughs and the younger man rolls his eyes. The restaurant owner says he is going to go and make her salad now. It’s a good thing, she thinks—food—as she’s getting way too drunk.

  The kid asks questions. He seems suspicious of her.

  His suspicions make me nervous. I’m a mom, I finally tell him, losing my disguise.

  A mom? And where’s your husband? the kid asks.

  The restaurant owner comes back with the salad. There are strawberries in it and walnuts. It’s a strange salad, not very good, but at that point I would eat anything.

  As I eat, the kid explains to the restaurant owner that I’m a new mom and the restaurant owner says that there’s no way I’m a mom. I don’t look like a mom.

  Well, I am a mom, I say. Thank you.

  Are we going? says the kid. They have plans.

  Maybe not now, says the restaurant owner. He talks about my tights to the kid, who seems unimpressed.

  What was your former fiancée like? I ask the kid. I try to picture the girl whom he dumped. She probably looked like one of those girls from the streets behind my hotel, from the night before. One of those puking-on-the-corner California girls. She probably had blond hair.

  She was a knockout, the kid says.

  Was? Is she dead?

  He says, Yes, was.

  Ah. Mafia. Where were you gonna go tonight? I say. I’m almost done my salad. I have more wine. The waiter brings another bottle.

  I really want a cigarette. Can I smoke in here?

  The restaurant owner doesn’t answer right away. Then he says to the kid, Look, see how much I’m into this woman? I’m going to let her smoke in here.

  I light a cigarette. Where were you gonna go, guys? I ask again, and the kid laughs but nothing in his face looks smiley.