June would visit the store in Rockefeller Center I’d been assigned to. The other sales people would busily clean and straighten their sections, while praying she wouldn’t ask them any questions about sales of a particular line of dresses or handbags.
Me, I waved and said, “Hi, June. How are you?”
My casualness with those in charge drove all rest of the salespeople nuts.
One day, my father stopped into the store. After his inspection of the men’s suits to make sure they hung perfectly in line on the racks, he walked over to the ladies side.
“Linny,” he called out. “Junie and I are taking you out on Sunday. Be ready at our apartment at eleven.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“It’s a surprise,” he said with a grin. “Dress nice.”
He turned to leave and once out of sight the other sales girls relaxed and put the Windex and paper towels back in their hiding spot. The jewelry and scarf cases sparkled at least for the next few minutes until a customer came in and decided to smear their greasy fingers all over it.
Sunday morning came. Mom and I both tried to get ready in the small quarters of her one bedroom apartment. She for church and me for my big surprise. I picked out a new skirt I purchased at Rogers Peet with my employee discount, gray with dark red and olive green stripes cut on the bias. With a matching green sweater, I did look adorable, young and thin wearing the latest fashion. Mom pulled a gold necklace out of her dresser drawer and put it around my neck.
“You look so grown up,” she said. “Where do you think he’s taking you?”
“I have no idea, but I hope it’s somewhere fun.” A visit to a new museum, lunch at the top of the World Trade Center or even a Broadway show crossed my mind. No matter what Dad chose, I didn’t expect to be disappointed.
“Whatever it is I hope you have a good time,” Mom said.
I’m grateful for the fact that my parents kept their divorce civil. They never involved their children in their disputes and never held us hostage in them either. June always asked how Mom was doing when I came cross-town for Sunday dinner at their apartment. Mom asked about both their wellbeing when I returned home in the evening. Once Mom asked me to deliver to Dad a past due dental bill for me on my weekly visit but that’s the only time I remember being used as the middleman.
Maybe I was wrong that she was looking to get my father back. Mom settled in nicely here making lots of friends at her new church. Church was a solid foundation for her. It always had been. Looking back, church became a solid foundation for me too; I was just too young to recognize it. Occasionally I went with her on Sunday in New York but often I didn’t. She didn’t mind going alone.
Dad and June were waiting outside their building when I walked up from the bus stop. He hailed a cab and said to the driver, “Penn Station.”
When we arrived at the train station, Dad bought three round trip tickets to Belmont Race Track. Off to the horse races we went, Dad’s favorite pastime with June and I tagging along. June acted excited but even then I had the impression she was going along for the fun of it, not that she had any real interest in watching a horse race.
At nineteen, I’d never been allowed at a racetrack before though I knew a lot about them from hanging around with Dad. The Daily Racing Form must have been delivered to his door every day. I have many memories of him sitting in his favorite chair, with his little stub of a pencil, figuring out his bets for the day’s races. No talking allowed while the manual calculations happened. Gambling on horse races took precedent over everything else.
Belmont is a gorgeous place and I took in all the sights and sounds of a new experience. Flowers blooming, perfectly green grass surrounding the neatly combed dirt track. Scores of people milling about, eyes down studying today’s racing form trying to decide which thoroughbred would be a winner. I became enthralled with the electricity of the place.
We watched a couple races from our grandstand seats, Dad disappearing a few minutes before the betting windows closed and reappearing when the announcer said, “And they’re off!”
As the first horse crossed the finish line, he broke out in a big smile before disappearing again, I assumed to pick up his winnings. June and I snacked on hot dogs and cokes and gossiped about the women wearing elegant hats and men in mismatched outfits passing by.
June had been in my life for almost ten years now and I’d grown to love her excitement at every crazy hairdo or fashion statement that walked by. New York City turned out to be the perfect place for coo-koos as she liked to say. June never tried to mother me; she had too much respect for my own mother. So we found common ground in the silly people and places she loved.
“Linny, c’mon,” Dad said as the fifth race was announced.
Dutifully I got up and followed him.
Up the steps, across the concourse, down the escalator, around the corners we walked before ending up in the paddock. I don’t know the general rules of horse tracks, but how we were able to get so close to the main attraction here was mysterious. Dad glanced over the majestic animals before heading back toward the betting windows.
What I didn’t know was I was part of a perfectly choreographed ballet. He walked through a deserted corridor at a frantic pace. A tall, sloppily dressed man in a dirty, wrinkled white shirt and baggy plaid pants limped toward us from the opposite direction. I struggled to keep up and lagged slightly behind Dad.
The two men abruptly stopped in front of one another. The other man looked suspiciously down his nose and over his bushy gray mustache at me.
“My daughter, Linda,” Dad said. “This is The Mustache.”
“Hello. Nice to meet you,” I hesitated not knowing what else appropriate to say to a man whose name was Mustache.
“Escapade to win,” said The Mustache.
Dad palmed him some money and ran to place his bet seconds before the window closed. The Mustache disappeared back into the shadows from where he’d come.
Dad’s smiled exceptionally big and broad as Escapade crossed the finish line first and by a furlong. So did June. Her years spent by her husband’s side at the racetrack taught her to instinctively know the wins from the losses. Somehow I couldn’t picture my father emptying his wallet at the dining room table to give June her share of his good luck. Maybe she did love him enough that it made her happy just to see him smile that winning smile.
I had quite the story to tell my college roommates when I returned to school. The most exciting day of summer vacation was spent at the racetrack getting tips from a mysterious man named The Mustache. Their eyes would widen and their mouths fall open when they heard my tale comparing it to their summers working at Cedar Point amusement park loading a non-stop stream of vacationers onto roller coasters.
Forty years later I view this day quite differently. Dad didn’t want to surprise me at all. He wanted to do what he wanted and I was finally old enough to go with him. Why not turn his favorite pastime into a father daughter outing? I never made many demands on either of my parents. I would have been happy going to the fancy ice cream parlor June kept talking about. June probably would have chosen that too. As the youngest and last in line, I typically went with the flow, never sticking my neck out. I was up for any new experience. That made me, in many ways the perfect child to live in between my mother and Dad and June and get along well on both sides of the city.
I suspect that’s where the money went for my college education, but maybe he made it back that day and didn’t want to share his good fortune on anything more productive than betting on another horse race. Maybe I ended up with a self-absorbed parent who had no idea how to be a parent and had little concern for anyone other than himself.
“Embrace the glorious mess that you are.” - Elizabeth Gilbert
Chapter Sixteen
Exhausted after the long drive home, I dialed June’s number before I unp
acked the car. The phone rang and rang and rang. I never got June to use an answering machine and now was not the time for any more change other than what was currently being inflicted on her.
“What time is it Richard?” I said to him in the garage.
“Quarter after three,” he answered appearing in the doorway with my suitcase.
“I know they feed them early but this seems a little too early for dinner,” I said. “Maybe she’s getting her hair done.”
I made her an appointment before I left. Her hair had been looking kind of ratty lately and in better days I knew bad hair days meant a cranky June.
“Maybe she’s playing bingo.” He dumped all my dirty clothes in the washing machine. “Stinks like cigarettes,” he added.
“I doubt it. Every time I visited her, she was curled up in a ball on her bed.” I said. “And you would stink too if you spent a week in June’s apartment.”
Richard and I settled into our usual banter like I’d never been gone. That was a wonderful benefit of being married for almost thirty years. He filled me in on all the gossip of our 55 plus neighborhood and I showed him all the Thomas Wolfe books in the back of my car. He rolled his eyes like he always did when I brought books home that I had no more room for in the bookcase. He didn’t share my love of books; he liked magazines, short, sweet and to the point.
I relaxed quickly now that I was home. Ginger’s nails scratched across the tile floor trying to get enough traction to race into my waiting arms. I’d missed her wet kisses and warm snuggles. By the speed of her tail wagging, she missed me too. Forgetting the grief and sorrow of past week however, would take more than a few tummy rubs.
Little by little, I emptied the trunk of the Thomas Wolfe books, June’s steel lockbox containing what she considered important papers, like an insurance policy cashed in years ago and Dad’s Navy discharge papers that no longer held any importance. The mysterious and scary white box found its way onto my desk. Stacked in my office, I warned Richard not to touch any of it. I had to go through it more thoroughly.
“Why did you bring all this stuff home?” he asked.
“It’s old family stuff I couldn’t throw away. You know how I am about books,” I answered. “But there’s that box of papers she left specifically to me. I’m afraid to open it.”
“Just open it,” he said. “What is there to be afraid of?”
“Oh, I don’t know but I feel jittery every time I look at that flimsy old box with my name scribbled on the top. It belongs in a Stephen King novel,” I quipped. “I’m really craving a drink right now.”
“You didn’t bring her booze home, did you?” he asked with an inflection of disbelief. “The cocktail lounge closed here a couple years ago.”
“No,” I said. “The furniture guy took it. Said he could sell it.”
“Are you serious?” Richard asked.
“Every penny we can get, helps,” I answered.
About a year after Richard and I moved to Melbourne, Florida away from Delray Beach and June, I found the strength to give up my daily bottle of wine once and for all. What we originally thought was an exciting opportunity started out sour and my drinking only escalated. The sale of the house in Delray fell through four days before the closing and we had already moved into our new, beautiful home on a lake where the birds chirped all day long and deer roamed in the wildlife preserve next door. We started out life here owning two homes and neither of us had a job. What should have been a new exciting adventure turned into anything but and pouring the first glass of wine started at lunchtime when there was nothing left on the daily agenda to do and an eon of anxiety to remove.
Every day fell into a routine. I woke up with a headache, laid around the house nursing it all morning, feeling better around three before pouring a glass of wine. I’d guzzle one down not remembering that the vicious cycle would start all over again.
My drinking habit started in high school when my friends and I would drive to the 7-11, pool our money and ask people going inside to buy us a 6 pack of beer. Some refused and others agreed without giving us back the change. College solidified my habit with Thursday nights downtown at the bars and Friday afternoon fraternity mixers. Once in the working world I came home every night after work and poured myself one, two, three glasses of wine just so I could convince myself I needed to relax.
When I met Richard, our first date was in a tacky Ft. Lauderdale beach bar that served me a glass of white wine in a frosted highball glass with a paper umbrella. He slugged down a V.O. and ginger ale and together we started our relationship as bar flies. He kicked his habit about ten years earlier than me but continued to enable my growing habit by making sure I never ran out of wine.
I was killing myself and I knew it but I felt helpless to stop. Being jobless with no good leads on the horizon, I drank so much Richard started buying me $1.99 rotgut chardonnay at Wal-Mart and I couldn’t tell the difference. The buzz felt the same, the buzz that helped to numb my growing anxiety.
Privately without telling anyone, I started praying. Praying to God for help to stop drinking. Each morning I prayed not to reach into the refrigerator and open a bottle of wine. Each afternoon I found myself doing just that, helpless to stop myself. I drank until I finished today’s wine bottle and passed out on the sofa with the television blaring. I was a patient person but at this time in my life, I wished I wasn’t. I wanted to take this crutch called alcohol, break it over my knee and toss it out the window. I’d had enough. I knew in my heart when the right time arrived, I would be more than strong; I would be invincible.
One day I went to the kitchen to start cooking dinner. I opened the refrigerator and took out the chicken, potatoes and some fresh broccoli, set them on the counter and closed the refrigerator door. My habitual reach for the wine bottle didn’t happen that day. I took a deep breath and started chopping.
That my usual glass of wine wasn’t sitting next to my dinner plate didn’t go unnoticed.
“No wine tonight?” Richard asked with a forkful of potatoes hanging halfway between his plate and his mouth.
“I’m trying to quit,” I answered.
“Want me to throw out all the bottles in the pantry? I don’t want you to be tempted,” he said.
Richard knocked his alcohol habit many years ago. That I wasn’t able to kick mine had turned into a huge source of tension in our marriage. When I poured my wine, everything else stopped. I didn’t want to walk the dog, play Scrabble, Richard’s favorite game, or leave the house for a dinner out. My wine in hand, I settled in on the sofa in front of the television until I felt numbness from the tips of my fingers to the end of my toes. Then I passed out.
“Not yet. I’ll be okay,” I said as my hands shook.
“I’m proud of you,” he answered.
The long, hard road to sobriety began. I hadn’t planned to stop drinking that day. I had simply been patient. God chose that time and place to answer my prayer. I am forever grateful He did.
Without alcohol, my usual morning headache lasted all-day and night for a month. I walked around the house in slow motion, often nauseous, aching from head to toe. I talked to God a lot because if I didn’t I would have just uncorked a bottle and taken a swig. But I didn’t.
When my energy returned, and I sat down in front of the television at the end of a long, full day, without a glass of wine, I realized how big a crutch alcohol had been for me. So many books and magazines I hadn’t read, so many movies I passed out in the middle of, so many novels and stories I hadn’t taken the time to write. The world suddenly became an interesting place to explore. I no longer needed to sit down and relax with a drink after a long day of doing nothing.
If Richard and I had stayed in Delray near June and our weekly dinners out continued, would I have ever made the leap to sobriety? Richard’s sobriety started in 2000 and June continued to buy him a bottle of Seagram’s V.O. f
or years. She had it at the ready for him and offered to make him a drink whenever we visited her home. His mixer of ginger ale kept an unopened bottle of Robert Mondavi chardonnay company in her refrigerator.
I’ll never know if June truly believed her drinking habit wasn’t harmful. She could never stop at one and never let me either, always pouring me another glass and placing it in my hand. Not that I had the willpower to stop at one, but with a little encouragement I might have tried. Looking backward, I don’t believe I would have developed the desire to stop as long as June and I were hanging out together. She wasn’t the only factor but she was a big part of my habit.
Thank God she never tried to get me hooked on cigarettes.
***
After a long hot shower to scrub the last of the stench of smoke from my body, my muscles released a tiny, tiny bit of the tension.
I picked up the phone and called June again.
“Hi, June. It’s Linda.” For years I called her and never identified myself. She knew the sound of my voice. After the first time she asked who was calling, I started adding my introduction.
“Linda,” she growled. “Where are you? I need you.”
“I’m at home June. What do you need?” I calmly asked.
“You abandoned me! You and Richard left me all alone. I hate it here.”
The rock I now carried around in the pit of my stomach suddenly felt five pounds heavier than it had a few moments ago.
“You have my phone number. I wrote it in your book on the nightstand,” Suddenly I became the mother again, trying to calm and pacify the child. “You can call me anytime you want.”
A Bittersweet Goodnight Page 11