The Girl in Times Square

by Paullina Simons

  Lily understands. “So you are trading one addiction for another? Why are you taking the morphine if you’re not in pain?”

  “I’m in terrible pain. Have you seen I have no foot?”

  “We sat with you for five hours today and you never moaned or complained once.”

  Allison the stoic says, “So I should complain every time I have a pain?”

  Then she hangs up.

  Morphine. One addiction for another. Morphine dulls Allison’s desire for drink, though it doesn’t dull her desire to lie.

  The lies just never stop, never. To the doctors, lies, to the police, to me, to her husband, even to herself.

  Every word she utters about her drinking is a lie, and the lie is the sign. If there is one sure sign of an alcoholic it’s the lie, how much you drink, and the alibi—it’s his fault—and the denial—it’s not so bad—and Lily’s mother is the queen of them all. And the crown on the queen? “I can stop any time I want to. Any time. I just don’t want to. Why put myself through such an arbitrary test? What, just to satisfy you?”

  Allison lies about her drinking to everybody who will listen and if you don’t catch her in the lie, she continues to lie, asks you to lie for her, and if you do catch her, she gets upset you are knocking her house of cards over.

  But every word she utters is a lie.

  The water, the palm trees, the complete absence of wind, the transparent lapping water, the Pacific. For millions of years the ocean has surged up Wailea Beach, bringing animal life, plant life, news of wars and death. Tsunamis and coral reefs, all washed into the same salt now rinsing over Lily’s face. Suddenly she becomes afraid of her own shadow in the water, thinking it’s a shark.

  Volcanoes rising out of the water. The gentle Pacific carrying with it the souls of the universe, washing Lily’s face with Jurassic spirit and WWII spirit, and the ghost of every whale who’s ever died, all of it on her face—eternity, and that’s exactly what it feels like.

  Lily has broken out in a hivy rash all over her lips and chin. She is not feeling great. Right after she and Papi got back from their walk, she fainted on the lanai. Papi found her on the floor.

  Friday. George does not want to spend time in the hospital with his wife. While visiting Allison, he mills, smokes, sits for two seconds. It chafes him, he wants to be done. Her father, Lily realizes, oh he pretends he is so brave, getting on with his life, talking to his daughter while he smokes his cigarettes. But sitting beside his sick wife isn’t a smoking talking situation. There’s only the stump, the morphine-quiet. George wants to go home, get a beer and talk about her.

  He is not going to think about how Allison is going to get around when she gets home. How is she going to go up and down that step? Get herself into the bathroom, into the tub? When her stump heals completely, she can, if she wants to, get a prosthesis, but in the meantime, what?

  Lily wants to go home. She has been sketching Maui into her book, but now she wants to paint it in her studio, feel the New York breeze on her face, walk down Second Avenue, get Chicken Tikka Masala from Baluchi’s. Lily paints here instead. She’s brought some oil pastels with her, some watercolor pencils. With the oil pastels, though they’re very messy, Lily paints a small picture of the beach and the water, and Jupiter in the sky.

  George paints in his own way—he cooks. He cooks asparagus and brings it to the hospital with mustard sauce, papaya, and mango and pineapple. When she tastes the asparagus, Allison says, oh, no, he put too much salt in it. He knows I can’t have salt.

  “Mom,” Lily says, “what are you talking about? Papi sees how much salt you pour on your cucumbers.”

  “Well,” she says, “that’s special salt.”

  “You know what? When someone cooks for you, you have to say thank you very much and eat what they bring you.”

  Allison says there are more important things in life than just stuffing your face.

  Lily gives her mother the picture she had painted. Allison looks at it for a few moments. “Do you see what I mean? Sun every day. What could be more depressing?” She lets the picture fall on the blanket. Lily takes it, rips it into little pieces and throws it in the garbage.

  “What’s the matter with you?” says Allison.

  The subject of Aloha House has been dropped. Dr. Matthews tells Allison that when she is discharged, she will have to go to AA meetings every single day, no ifs, ands or buts. Allison is nodding, but Lily knows what her mother is thinking: I’ll say anything to leave the hospital.

  Back at the condo, Lily empties the gin bottle that was hidden in the trunk of the Mercedes and fills it with water. How funny is that going to be?

  Allison told Lily that when she was home she would sleep during the day and wake up and sleep again, and wake up at five in the morning when Papi was sleeping and there was nothing for her to do, so she would drink.

  At five in the morning she drank! Papi didn’t know that and it shocked him, the depth of her drinking, even though he had lived it every day, letting her continue, watching her kill herself, powerless to help. He would make her breakfast, and he would make her sashimi for lunch and he would make her soup for dinner, and he would bring the food to his drunk wife on the lanai, and would serve her, and would give her utensils and a napkin and she would eat half-heartedly, her mouth barely moving, barely opening, and she would tell him it was too salty, and then she would scream that she wished he would die like a dog, and then she would crawl back to her room again, and have some more gin.

  George is bitter now, not about Allison, but about Maui. He hates it as much as a man can hate the thing that has brought him such complete despair. Its drama, its beauty, its grace, its very Godliness and primevalness reminds him only of its utter, dismal and complete failure to please Allison. The most beautiful place George has ever seen brought his wife to depths of hell he has never seen, and it sickens him now, all of it, together, sickens him with its colorful birds of paradise flowers and its resplendent morning glory.

  George says all he’ll remember about his two-hour morning walks—when everything in the universe seemed not only possible but attainable—was that during those divine, Resurrectionmass mornings, his wife was already drunk since five, was already on the floor, broken, slurring, incoherent. He doesn’t seem to know how to cope with that—and doesn’t. He goes out for a smoke, and stays out.

  Saturday. An AA sponsor named Shelly came in the afternoon and talked to Allison.

  “Such a mess I’ve made,” Allison said to Shelly. Accent on the I.

  Perhaps there was hope? Has the amputated foot given Lily’s mother a new perspective?

  But after two hours the AA sponsor left, and Allison said to Lily, “I have a disease, Lily. I’m sick!” Excited vindication was in her voice.

  No, Lily wanted to say to her mother. I have a disease. I’m sick. She said nothing, unable to muster either the excitement or the vindication.

  “I’m sick! Shelly told me. She told me not to feel bad, not to blame myself too much.”

  “Do you do a lot of that, Mom?” Lily asked casually. “Blame yourself too much?”

  “Shelly thought so. She said all I talked about was how it was my fault. She told me to stop being so hard on myself.”

  “Mom, why do you say these things to Shelly when you know they’re not true?”

  “They are true—I have a disease!”

  “That’s not what I mean. You spend your entire life blaming Papi for all your troubles, and I mean all your troubles, so why do you pretend to Shelly it’s otherwise? How is that going to help you?” Lily was disgusted.

  “This is counter-productive, Lily,” said her mother philosophically. “We need to look forward.”

  “Okay. I agree.”

  “I have a disease, daughter! A sickness!”

  “It can be cured.” Why were these words so hard for Lily? She was trying not to draw parallels.

  Allison shook her head vigorously. “That’s just the thing. There is nothi
ng anyone can do. Do you know what Shelly told me? Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. She has people in her AA meetings who have not drunk for fifty years and they still call themselves alcoholics. It’s incurable. Until their dying days all they want is a drink.”

  Lily listened to her mother. “What’s your point?” she asked slowly.

  “This is all hopeless,” Allison said with a breezy air. “I can never be cured.”

  “Mom, how many limbs will you have to lose before you stop drinking? You only have three left.”

  Her mother said haughtily, “Shelly said that once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.”

  “The responsibility is still yours. Shelly was not telling you you couldn’t control it, was she?”

  “No…But I’m always going to want a drink. And Shelly said we slip, we are not expected to be perfect.”

  Why was Lily starting to hate this Shelly? Could she have been more unhelpful? It’s almost as if she provided Allison with absolution—I’m sick! I have a disease! It’s out of my hands! I’m not in control!

  How many more days till she could go home?

  “Is this your crying room, Mom?” asked Lily.

  “What?”

  She told her mother about the kindly priest in St. Patrick’s and about the Bishop of Rome.

  And Allison turned away from Lily and said the most incomprehensible words of the entire week. “No, my child,” she said. “This is not my crying room. This is only the wolf at its door.”

  On the beach. Sunday morning. Sunday morning in Maui, not a flutter in the sky, so peaceful. Lily sketched and sketched, palms and hammocks, cliffs and volcanoes, flame trees and valleys between mountains.

  Lily thought about herself and her mother. Thinking that most of us aren’t at peace because we don’t know what we have to be at peace with. Most of us aren’t happy because we’re not living the life we want and we don’t know how to deal with that. We don’t know how to cope with that. And so we flutter onward, with apologies to Ralph Nader, wretched at any speed.

  We should all be so lucky as to get cancer.

  Lily thought, and I don’t mean that flippantly.

  I mean—to get cancer and be lucky enough to survive.

  Cancer—such a clarifying experience.

  Alcoholism—less clarifying.

  But without alcohol, what does her mother have? Nothing, Lily thinks.

  Allison perceives her life as wasted, she perceives herself as old. She’s gone to therapy, she’s been on psychiatric drugs—Zoloft, Prozac. She hates her life—sobriety only points that up. She hates herself when she’s drunk, but she hates herself sober more. At least when she’s drunk, blackout time passes quickly.

  Time passeth until death.

  And with every blackout, death is closer—not a bad thing. Why doesn’t she kill herself. She’s a coward. Afraid of God. Why would she risk eternal damnation? If she’s wasted enough and drives the car into a ditch, she can pretend to God her death was accidental. She thinks she can fool God with her little charades. And our father sitting on the phone for years trying to scare us with the possibilities of Mommy’s death—can’t he see it’s precisely what she wants? All the things that make up this life, she’s discarded, thrown away, turned her back on. Things like shopping by catalog, make-up, travel, reading books, writing, Communion with God, with friends, with her six grandchildren! All the things that make life pleasurable Allison does not want, except the gin burn in the throat and the oblivion that soon follows. She is the walking dead. Dead to us, dead to herself.

  “I can stop any time I want to. I just don’t want to.”

  Papi closes his eyes to have a quiet life, and Allison is so pleased with that.

  She says, your father will live so well without me. And Lily thinks she is right. He would.

  He will fish, he will go online, he will watch his sports, he will cook. His days will continue to be full. Only cooking will be hard because it’s better to cook for someone. Only watching the movies at night will be hard, because it’s better to watch movies with someone. Lily knows this to be true. She will not cry on this Maui Sunday, she won’t. She draws Spencer’s eyes, watching adored Groundhog Day with her; laughing, adored. She will not cry.

  Her mother’s disease is not alcoholism. That’s just the symptom. Her disease is the black hole inside her that the drink helps to close up. And Allison needed to drink quite a bit before the drink closed it.

  In the hospital Lily sits with her mother. Papi is elsewhere.

  Lily tries the soft approach. “Do you want to talk to me?”

  “I’m all talked out.”

  Lily doesn’t know what else to say. She tries again. “Do you want to tell me? Tell me about your…crying room?”

  Allison just waves her off. “God, where’s that cigarette?”

  “Can’t smoke in here, Mom. Oxygen tanks everywhere.”

  “Oh, all these rules. I can’t stand it. I just want to be in my own house again. Be in charge of my own life again.”

  “Is that what you were,” said Lily, “before? In charge of your own life?” Seems to her that life was in charge of her mother.

  Allison looks at Lily. “Aren’t you fresh. How am I supposed to tell you anything when you talk to me like that?”

  “I’m sorry. Please tell me.”

  “Forget it now. Ask your grandmother about me, if you want. She’ll tell you. She knows more than me. I’m surprised she hasn’t said anything to you already, the way she never stops yapping about her past.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Let me ask you, don’t deny it. You sometimes wish I wasn’t your mother, don’t you? That you could have a different mother?”

  Lily is silent.

  “I know you do. I know you do. The way you treat me, the way you’re always on your father’s side, on your brother’s side. Against all sense and reason.”

  “Mom…”

  “You better be good to me, Lily,” whispers her mother, pointing a finger at her, and then tapping herself on the chest. “Because I’m the only one you’ve got.”

  Was she leaving tomorrow? Next minute wouldn’t be soon enough.

  Monday. The hospital allowed the invalid mother special dispensation to go to the prosecutor’s office and talk to Kim Fallone. If Fallone dismisses the charges, all will be well.

  On Monday morning Allison in a wheelchair is with Kim Fallone for an hour. Before that she was trying to convince Lily that all her injuries were sustained in one fall in the bathtub, her toe, her head and all her leg and arm bruises. As if. Allison sober is completely unable to understand that she, as a rational human being, could ever have inflicted such terrible injuries on herself. She is presumably trying to explain this single catastrophic fall to Ms. Fallone.

  Lily and George wait and pace. Lily discovers from a book that the red glowing tree is called the Poinciana, or the Flame Tree. Love that.

  Love that tree.

  Will paint that tree a thousand different ways when I get back home. Will paint Maui, the ocean, the volcanoes when I get home.

  George said, “You know your mother’s bottle of gin? I threw it out.”

  Eyes behind sunglasses, Lily said, “That’s good.”

  He said, “Yes, but an unexplainable thing. I tasted it, and, I don’t know how, it’s mysterious to me, but it seemed to be mostly water.”

  Lily said, “That is surprising.”

  After a pause, he said, “You did it?”

  She nodded, trying not to smile.

  George shook his head. “What are you, crazy? It’s not me you have to keep a check on.”

  Lily said, “I was afraid after I left you would give it back to her. Would you give her one of your beers if she asked for it? Just a little beer? Just one, because she says she can handle it?”

  George left to buy himself an iced tea. He had taken a real shine to the Snapple iced teas he had railed at Lily for buying six days ago.

  When he came b
ack, he said that if someone had told him ten years ago that he would be the kind of man who could not keep vodka in the house, could not keep cognac in the house, could not keep gin in the house, could not drink a beer in front of the TV in his own house! he would have said the hell with you and this life, I want no part of it. “Yet look at me, I curse my life, I curse that I cannot do the things I love because your mother has no self-control, yet I live it.”

  Lily didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.

  “Do you know why?”

  “Because you love her.”

  “Yes.” said George. “But what is she going to do when she comes back home? She’ll be hobbled yes, but she doesn’t know how to do anything else besides drink.”

  “I think that’s one of the problems,” Lily said.

  “She says to me, what am I supposed to do now? How can I as an adult answer that question for another adult?” George was indignant. “She has no interests, suddenly it’s my fault? It’s my fault that she needs constant attention?”

  “It’s not going to be easy. Maybe she can take up knitting?” But Lily is thinking of something else. She is thinking of her mother. Of the sadness inside that Allison simply can’t shake. Lily knows a man just like that.

  Kim Fallone recommended to move to dismiss the case without prejudice. Which means they can reopen the file if there is another similar complaint within a year. Lily’s mother was wiping her eyes, looking so relieved. Was God looking out for Allison? Did God show his presence in Maui? That 49, 45, 39, 24, 18, 1 presence? Allison is footless, but not dead. And if not her, who was God looking out for?

  Lily said, “Well, that’s all folkssss. Not that it hasn’t been fun. It’s been swell. But I have to be going now. I’ve got a plane to catch.”

  59

  And Now—About Spencer

  When Lily got back to New York, her message box was FULL. There were ten messages from DiAngelo telling her she needed to come in and see him. “Lily, blood work once every two weeks, and I haven’t seen you in three. Call me.” Out of 27 messages, there was a short one from Spencer. From the new Spencer. “Hello, it’s Spencer.” As if she wouldn’t know. The formality is just for distance. Lily understands. “You called last Saturday, late, just making sure you’re all right. If you still need something, call me at the station at—” He leaves his number! Who is he; who is she?