I hide in my room most of the time.
My roommate has exposed her boobs to at least three men that I know of, but she always goes back to her Neapolitan junkie, Donicio, and we all watch her make him salads and fetch him coffee during meals just like Charlotte, the elementary-school teacher whom she called the Wife. Charlotte isn’t here anymore to see it. Charlotte hasn’t made it to the end either, on account of her man back home asking her to marry her over the phone before week three.
The closer to the end, the more I retreat inside myself.
But this time it’s different.
Maybe it’s because it’s just me and no Frankie and no booze, it seems as if I finally have the room to notice myself.
In our final session, my counsellor says it’s a good feeling, the one I have, of noticing myself, but she pretty much says this about anything—good or bad. She has time to see me all the time, now that Alex is gone.
The person I notice, me, is a person in progress, the counsellor explains before I leave her office.
I’m not sure what she means by that. I admit to myself that I’m unfinished in some areas, just like everybody else. And in other areas I seem to be dead, like the part of me that died when I moved here from another country.
I no longer feel that I’ve come from anywhere. I’m just here. I’m still hanging on to illusions, such as my relationship with my boyfriend. The important thing is that I’m not completely irreversible. Sober, I feel that I can be fixed in some places, such as with my relationship. I even get a sliver of hope, right near the end of my stay, and this is more hope than I’ve had for months. The feeling of being underwater is still present—the almost palatable sensation that I’m not completely tuned in, that I’m missing something, like the one breath needed to break through and be present—but I’m more at ease with it, or perhaps I’m closer to the surface than I thought I was.
On our final evening as a group we are asked to write six things that we can’t live without. We’re told to cross two things out, then another two, then one more. The one thing that’s left, this particular counsellor explains, is the thing that we have left in life worth fighting for.
I’d written Frankie’s name six times.
GRADUATION
By the end of our stay we’ve explored every possible topic to do with addiction—origins of addiction, sobriety maintenance, relapse—and for the last forty-eight hours there’s a feeling of freedom, much like the last day of school when you feel like tearing through hallways and high-fiving even your most tight-assed teachers. Ours is a small class—there were more than twenty of us when we started; now we’re down to eleven. Just like in high school, we get punished for smoking, and many people were kicked out for that.
The weather is fantastic. It’s crazy-warm, summer-like. I make my only jeans into shorts; my roommate lends me a tank top.
We’re allowed to stay outside for as long as we want, and all eleven of us spread all over the benches around the basketball court.
I watch families pushing old men and women in wheelchairs through the parking lot toward the seniors’ unit.
Even though we’re about to leave, people keep talking about being able to switch buildings, what it would be like to wake up facing the lake instead of a parking lot or a fence.
One of the counsellors says that the building is a palliative-care unit. Someone makes a joke that so is ours, although it may take us longer to buy it, you just never know.
My roommate says that Donicio probably won’t have to wait long at all, and he calls her a dumb whore and walks back into the building. She runs after him screaming his name in a shrill voice.
Sebastian, the guy who follows me around, takes off his shirt and flexes his biceps for me. Am I sexy? he says.
Very, very sexy, I say.
I can’t wait to leave.
And then it’s here.
We’re leaving the next day. Now it’s only ten of us left. Someone lost it the night before, went out and used. The day before graduation and he went out and used. It’s the guy who supposedly liked me, Sebastian. I can’t help but wonder if I was being too much of a bitch to him. But no, I know better than to give myself so much credit—nobody can make anybody use. Using is a personal decision.
When someone brings up the subject in our regular morning meeting after the tobacco propaganda, one of the counsellors says that leaving right before it’s time to leave is totally normal. But he won’t say a lot more than that since the counsellors are not allowed to discuss other clients. A late onset of relapse is a normal part of recovery, the counsellor assures everyone.
Almost everything seems to be a normal part of recovery. Relapse, slip, overconfidence, compliance, happiness, unhappiness, hunger, loneliness, friendships, too much of something or not enough of something or just the right amount of everything—every single thing can be a normal part of recovery.
The next day, we leave as early as possible. It’s dark outside, the day hasn’t even started. Donicio is wearing a suit and nice shoes. The Priest is dressed in his usual black. Both of them light up as soon as they exit the building; they’re standing and smoking, right in front of it. I find their urgent smoking defiant. But maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe they just wanted to smoke.
Sade is waiting with me in the lobby, in her pink PJs, a tiny, flimsy robe wrapped around her tightly. She’s leaving later; one of her sugar daddies is picking her up. The same one who dropped her off. She looks worried, as if she had to stay another week instead of just a few hours more. She pokes her head outside, says something to Donicio, who says something back to her and she yells, Jerk!, and laughs, delighted.
Tina is talking to Kevin, still trying to exchange numbers with him, but all she gets is an email address. In a few hours she’ll see her Scottish boyfriend, Douglas, and she won’t have to think about Kevin, but I understand where she’s coming from—anything at this point. Only hours separate us from re-entering our regular lives, but we’ve been thinking of leaving for the past three weeks so often that it seems that this waiting will never end. The last half-hour seems to stretch into infinity.
Finally, magically, the cab that will take us to the bus station in town is here. Sade screams and throws her arms around Tina, then me, then she runs out and kisses Donicio right on the mouth. She gives the Priest a big hug and almost kisses him on the mouth too but Kevin calls her name, like a teacher, and she rolls her eyes and goes back inside, shivering in her nightclothes.
That’s my last image of New Hope: Sade with her too big doll-like head, full of bouncing curls, her arms crossed, vibrating, and her hands rubbing together for warmth.
On the bus, Donicio takes his jacket off. He’s got a nice dress shirt underneath, clearly ironed. He must’ve had it hanging in the closet, ready for this final day, the whole time.
Donicio is already walking the streets in his clean, crisp shirt, running into his friends, doing his thing. This is what, I imagine, goes on inside him; the body on the bus is just delivering him there. He’s not as talkative as usual; even his laughter seems restrained when the Priest tells us jokes.
Donicio exchanges phone numbers with Tina, says he’ll give her a call for sure, once he’s in the city. I can’t imagine what they’re going to do together. Go shopping?
The Priest passes us scraps of paper with his first name and an email address written on it. He doesn’t have a phone, doesn’t have an address yet. He’s staying with Donicio for a week and then who knows. That’s another thing about Donicio: he’s invited the Priest to stay with him. I like Donicio quiet, and generous like that, different than he was inside. I know it will seem too out of character, maybe even like a capitulation, if I suggest exchanging numbers with him. I want to. But I don’t and he doesn’t ask and I feel a little hurt by that.
The men get off in St. Catharines. I’ve never been to St. Catharines before. In the darkness, the bus terminal seems more grey and more depressing than anything I’ve seen so
far this morning.
Donicio says maybe he’ll see me in meetings.
Maybe. But I doubt it.
You’re funny, bella. Ciao.
Then it’s just Tina and me and the rest of our trip. We don’t talk to each other. I look out the window and it’s the same blur of parking lots, warehouses, fences as it was on the way here.
Then I’m home. Standing right in front of my house.
I don’t knock right away. Not yet. I stand on my tippytoes and look inside.
There he is, my boyfriend with his glasses on. I still never think of him as someone who wears glasses, so I’m startled again by this new incarnation. I notice he’s maybe slouching a bit too, shoulders slightly more inward.
The baby is on the floor, playing. My boyfriend approaches him and the baby looks up. My boyfriend picks him up. The baby’s face is turned toward the door but he can’t see my face in the tiny window, he has no idea to look there for me.
I don’t want to knock. Not yet.
I just want to watch them, love them from outside, keep them the way they are, undisturbed by the chaos that I bring with me. I miss them both so much, although the baby I miss beyond missing. It’s like half of your face gone, your mouth and eyes.
I stand and watch them. I can’t cry. But I want to.
When I can’t take it anymore I knock on the door. It opens and then it’s a blur of shouts and hugs and kisses and tears—theirs—and the only clear thing is the baby’s weight against my body, which makes me feel immortal and, at the same time, completely disappointed that I am not.
AGAIN
Two months later, I’m drunk, again.
I don’t understand.
The next day, my boyfriend is silent, cold. We don’t talk. I don’t remember. I hold a fist to my mouth to stop myself from vomiting. The vomit is pressing against every single pore in my body. I am so thirsty I would drink vinegar if it was offered to me.
I have to leave the house before I fall apart completely, so I pick myself up, put on a dress and walk into the hottest day in May in the history of the world. I walk and stop and retch, not so discreetly beside the stroller.
I surface. My monster slobbery face, eyes bleeding, looking at Frankie looking at me from the stroller. I’m trying to smile, trying to tell him that Mommy is really okay, sweetie, it’s no big deal.
I also have the worst stomach cramps, so I have to run into various fast-food joints along the way. Once, I don’t make it in time and a bead of something too liquid slides all the way down my legs. I wash the back of my dress and dispose of my underwear in a random bathroom stall.
These are the indignities of a chronic drunk.
I spend the rest of the morning sleeping in the park, sleeping off my hangover, the baby sleeping in the stroller.
I wake up with grass blades engraved in my face. There’s a car parked nearby, a guy sitting in the car, watching.
I feel better after my nap. I let the baby out on the grass and he tries to push the stroller. He pulls my hat off my head and puts it on his. Now that I’m not feeling so sick, I am hungry, and we walk toward a park restaurant. I put the baby back in the stroller. He’s babbling to himself and laughing. We lose my hat somewhere but that’s okay.
After I eat, feeling slightly more human, I dial my boyfriend, desperate to tell him how much I love him. I need to see if things between us are okay despite what I don’t remember happened the night before.
He answers the phone and I can tell he’s mad but he says nothing about last night. We make small talk about what we’re going to do later on. I can tell he wants to go but I’m scared I’ll lose him. I am losing him already. I take a deep breath.
I tell him there was a scary guy watching us, just sitting in the car.
What scary guy? Are you okay? Do you need me to come and get you guys?
I exhale.
No, I think he’s gone. I’m fine now.
He cares.
On my way back from the park I walk into a liquor store.
I don’t even pretend that I’m not going to go inside. I just go inside. I don’t make any stupid jokes or comments about having a big party or anything like that. They can all blow me if they have a problem with me drinking while caring for a baby.
I should go home and stick this wine and the vodka in the fridge, not even bother pretending that I didn’t buy it. By now my boyfriend probably knows all of my hiding spots anyway.
A GIRL WALKS INTO A SNAKE
A few weeks go by during which I put myself on a painful schedule of drinking only twice, three times a week tops. On the days off I stuff my schedule chock full of mommy-baby activities, visit galleries, draw, write novella-length emails, watch endless TV reality shows. When I drink, I go back to my old routine of drinking after everybody goes to bed and passing out.
But unlike in the winter, it’s harder to confine myself and my drinking to home, and I start to crave social interactions—places where I can showcase the extreme wit and charm that I sometimes believe myself to acquire after a gallon of booze. Nothing in my most recent history testifies in favour of this belief, but—perhaps because of the warm weather, the sense of renewal—I suddenly get the rock star feeling of being invincible, get back into that Cosmo-woman fantasy that tells me that I do really well on booze. I’m sentimental too, like any drunk. For example, I’m still hanging on to one of my favourite memories of myself at twenty-one, wandering some city in Europe, in a blue dress, unwashed, drunk on vodka, hair full of sun and cigarettes, laughing with close friends who at night would turn into accidental lovers. We were going to live forever, of course, and we were always going to be drunk and it was always going to be summer.
Even after all my winter misery and rehab and sadness at home, this memory and all my other delusions are what seem to drive me. When the first summer invitation comes my way, I accept it immediately and convince my boyfriend that we should go.
On the day of the party, I’m walking toward the venue, a gallery, where I’m supposed to meet my boyfriend. I’m with the stroller and I’m wearing a tiny hat with feathers, and a blue silk dress. I look great. I’m bombed. Actually, I’m so bombed I can barely walk in these new stilettos, but holding on to the stroller supports my wobbling perfectly.
Hey, someone says behind me, I remember you.
I turn around. Someone familiar. Short, stocky, with round, happy cheeks.
Hey, it’s me, Rob. The manly voice confuses me for a moment but then I remember. It’s the AA lover from the harm reduction group. The one who reminded me of a middle-aged woman and who I’d nicknamed “Lesbian Man” to myself). I stifle laughter; it comes out as a loud snort.
He says, What? What is it?
Nothing, nothing, I giggle, How are you?
I’m great, I’m great! Lolita, right?
Not quite. His mixing up of my name stops dead the giggles. I hate it when people get my name mixed up with Lolita.
Jowita. Rob, right? Or Bob. Rob? Rob. It’s Rob.
Rob.
Yes. How are you? Are you well?
I say, I’m great.
Great. Great. Where are you off to?
I wonder if he can smell it on me. I doubt it.
I smile, Oh, I’m just going to this party. Which is why I’m wearing the funny hat, see? I poke myself in the hat, say: See? See?
He finally looks, blushes and nods. Nice hat.
How’s Jesus doing?
What?
You know, AA?
He blushes again.
I went to rehab, I tell him. It got worse. But now things are fine. Everything is so great.
Okay. Yeah, well, it’s one day at a time, you know.
Oh, yeah I just love those slogans, love them—I squeak loudly enough for my son to squeak in response from his stroller.
It’s okay, sweetie, I assure my son and try to aim for his head with my hand to pat it, it’s okay.
Is this the famous Frankie?
I don’t like hi
m knowing Frankie’s name. I wish I had lied about Frankie’s name in those meetings. I wish I had called him something like Arturo or Hugo. Too late now, I guess.
How ya doing, big man? How are ya? Rob-Bob says to Frankie. How are ya, buddy?
Bob.
Rob.
Rob, right. I gotta go. I’m going to be late for my thing.
Keep well.
Yes.
Great. I wish you another twenty-four hours.
At first I can’t figure out what he’s talking about. Then I do. Twenty-four hours. Right. I have a couple of those if you add up the days in my scheduled week.
I smile at him. Rob.
He’s just standing here.
I smile again. I’m starting to feel a little clearer.
He says, Oh, before I go … Do you know the story about the snake?
There’s a tiny bit of a headache creeping into the back of my head.
I shake my head no. I should know better but I can’t help myself. Someone says “story” and I’m all ears. I’m a sucker for stories. So I have to hear this stupid story.
Rob says, There was a little boy and he came across a rattlesnake. The snake said, ‘Please, little boy, can you take me across the river?’ ‘No, snake. If I pick you up you will bite me and I will die.’ And the snake says, ‘No, I’d never bite you. Just take me across the river.’
A group of friends of friends walks by. One of the girls recognizes me and gives me a little wave. I’m sure they’re on the way to the gallery where the party is. Oh, how I wish I was walking with them instead of being stuck with this freak. But screw them. Screw this girl. I should own this situation and this freak. I wave back, but they’ve turned around already. Screw them.
Sorry?
He carried it right across the river. The rattlesnake.
I thought he wasn’t going to do that.
Yes, but the snake promised him it wouldn’t bite him.
Drunk Mom Page 17