The Alcoholic's Daughter

by David Sherman

  He would have gassed the car and had the oil changed, the tires checked earlier that week. As she soundly slept, he’d sneak out of the house, hit the border by 2 a.m., get on US 87 and disappear south. Grab a motel outside Manhattan by rush hour.

  Sometimes he’d wonder, as he lay listening to her snore softly, and sometimes not so softly, how long would it take her to realize he was gone. Probably dinner time.

  By the time I get to Phoenix she’ ll be rising …

  She’d go running and then when she came home she’d think he was at the gym and then get lost in work. He’d be past New York, maybe in Washington by then and in a few days, after ignoring her calls, he’d start a new life in the Florida Keys, near Marathon, north of Key West. Maybe he’d find enough gigs to make ends meet. Play from Key Largo to Key West, $50 here, $200 there. Live in a trailer if he had to. Music, sunshine, peace of mind, maybe a girl or two. His fantasy didn’t always work that well as a sleep-aid, but he lay beside her smiling. If he was still conscious after the fantasy exodus, he’d go downstairs and pour a few ounces of Grants. And ponder.

  From that came the song that he opened most nights with.

  I know you’re thinking

  This man he’s been drinking

  And yes I’ve had a drop or two

  But drunk or sober

  It’s a painful truth

  I must be insane to be in love with you.

  It don’t make no sense,

  I’m dreaming of a white picket fence

  but I’m bruised black and blue

  My complaints are few

  It’s plain I like the abuse

  I must be insane to be in love with you.

  “Mary says she’s crazy,” Stan told him. They were sitting on the pier, looking out at the lake, Stan’s lake. “She hates her.”

  “Your sister is not the poster girl for sanity,” Evan said. “That’s why I haven’t heard from her for months.”

  “Left a void in your life, I’m sure,” Stan said.

  “I liked your sister,” Evan said, smiling as a fish jumped. “But I only spent a few hours with her here and there.”

  “I’m glad it was there, not here. She gets nuttier as she gets older. Maybe that’s why she can’t stand Annie. She sees herself in her. You think Annie is nuts?”

  “Do you?”

  “You fucking live with her,” Stan said.

  “Don’t remind me, that’s why I come up here, to get away.”

  “You’re always welcome. She seems wound a little too tight. She’s cute and all but there’s something there, as if she’s holding on for dear life. And she doesn’t eat. I figure someone doesn’t eat, they’re nuts. But you live with her. What do you think?”

  “Really fucking crazy.”

  He picked the bottle of tequila off the dock and poured an ounce or two into Stan’s glass.

  “You don’t have to drive.”

  “Nowhere to drive to,” Evan said, and surrendered to the booze, and the embrace of the lake and forgot for a moment he was living with a crazy person.

  “When I was living with Margaret, my son’s mother, the last few years, I was having an affair with the marketing woman at the office. She was great. Margaret, on the other hand, hated me. She knew but didn’t want to know and was hell to live with …”

  “Which was probably why you were having an affair with the marketing person at the office.”

  “No, I was having an affair with the marketing person because I’ll fuck anything that breathes, and I’m not even sure they have to be breathing. But Margaret, she was always on my case. Yelling, insulting, I guess abusive. I’m not up on the psychobabble, but she fucking knew how to dig the knife in and give it a good twist. And I was making dinner one night and she was chopping or slicing something, doesn’t matter, and I was reaching over to get a carrot or an onion but she had this huge German chopping knife in her hand and she just slammed it down on the cutting board. I’m sure she was aiming for my hand, and I pulled it away at the last second and she damn near split the cutting board. Could’ve taken my whole fucking hand off.”

  “Time to pack,” Evan said.

  “You’d think, eh? But I must’ve been dense or something or pussy crazed with the chick in the office ‘cause I didn’t skip a beat. But we had separate rooms. I started locking the door to my bedroom. She hated having sex anyway but the thought that I was enjoying myself with someone else really made her crazy. You and Annie still getting it on?”

  “Yeah, sometimes, I think she thinks by having sex she’ll hold on to me. Though the sex is not really about me or even us.”

  “She any good in bed? The freethinking feminist?”

  “No.”

  “Really? Shit. What’s the fucking point?”

  “I don’t know,” Evan said. “I think it has something to do with love.”

  “Love has nothing to do with it. That’s just the first chapter. You have the whole rest of the book to deal with. I figure it’s like running a marathon, lot of pain, lot of patience, lot of training.”

  “Sweat,” Evan said.

  “If you’re lucky. Best keep sharp objects away from her.” They laughed and looked out at the lake. “Crazy woman you have to watch your back.”

  “Unlike crazy men.”

  “Yeah,” Stan said. “We’re sane … even when we’re fucking nuts. Listen, Evan, I look at it like one file in a drawer full of files. There’s the marriage file, the work file, the money file, the friend file, the mistress file, kids, groceries, whatever. And you take it out when you’re dealing with it and put the file back and go to something else and leave the rest of the files in the drawer. You’re up here, forget about her, put Annie in the drawer.”

  “She’d probably fit.”

  “Kinda small, isn’t she?”

  “Truncated. What happened with Margaret?”

  “She suggested we take a break. So we did. I went to live with my brother for a bit. Came back one day, she had changed the locks. Couldn’t get in. Lawyers did real well. Lawyers always do real well.”

  Lost in the glow of everlasting love and renovation hell, Evan overlooked the fact he was putting a lot of cash into a house he didn’t own. He said he’d need some kind of paper and she said: “No problem, of course.”

  “You got anything on paper?” Stan asked when they were in the thick of plaster dust and were staying at an empty cottage Stan owned near the lake.

  “No,” Evan said.

  “That’s not too bright.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  He never saw the paper. But the prospect of domestic bliss in a reformed home that they would share seduced him ten-fold. And their love was forever. So why did he need a piece of paper?

  They went through reno hell with her losing it only a few times but making sure he had no say in any part of the process. She seemed to have a curious affection for Michel the contractor whose prices were outrageous but, as far as Annie was concerned, could do no wrong.

  “Fourteen hundred dollars for a door for your office?” Evan said. “Fourteen hundred dollars?”

  “It’s special,” she said.

  “That’s crazy. You can buy a hollow door for 75 bucks at Reno Dépot.”

  “This has a window in it.”

  “For fourteen hundred bucks it should have a motor and transmission. You got to tell him ‘no, it’s way overboard.’”

  “No,” she said. “It’ll be nice.”

  Annie and Michel made the decisions, Evan’s desires were met with umbrage. He forked out tens of thousands of dollars in cash to Michel, counting out tax-free hundreds in the passenger seat of his van.

  “I want the counters higher,” he said.

  “No way,” Annie said. “They’ll be too high.”

  “You don’t cook. They’ll be too low, it’ll kill my back.”

  “It’ll look ugly,” Annie said, eyes turning dark, anger starting to simmer.

  Michel was immediately consult
ed. He agreed that Evan should have the counters higher. Not as high as Evan would have liked but Michel and Annie came to terms on the height as Evan watched.

  “What’s with you and Michel?” Evan asked one night. “You have an affair with him?”

  “No, we were just friends,” she said. “Had dinner a couple of times.”

  Once Annie and he had settled into their familiar routine of abuse and reconciliation, he came to ponder his ex-wife, the young woman who had given herself to him for almost two decades, often in early-morning sessions with his favourite spirit.

  She knew how to love and looking back, she was the consummate partner. He could do wrong but she never thought it was her role in life to point that out. She made his son her own. Loved making love, loved pleasing him. Loved to bake and garden and paint. And if there was a problem, she stood beside him. Things had sure changed, he mused.

  Annie no longer apologized when she lost it. She might, but there was now a new angle of attack. He was trying to avoid arguments and avoid seeking shelter in the hotel and motel rooms.

  His unhappiness was his character flaw.

  “That’s what you do, you leave all the women you love,” Annie would hiss. “So easy for you to run.”

  “Isn’t that comforting for you,” he retaliated one night, standing at the door. “This from the woman who has yet to have any relationship work and has never lived with anyone. You’re never abusive. I’m just too sensitive. And I don’t want to leave you because you’re a fucking psychotic, obsessive compulsive alcoholic. I want to leave you because I’m weak and can’t stand real happiness. Do you have any idea how truly crazy you are?”

  He won that round, slammed the door and went to his favourite cocaine store then his motel sanctuary. He closed the door with the same sense of euphoria he always did. He was free. He was safe. He was away. He turned off his phone.

  Through the wall he heard a guy yelling, “Come, come, come,” as a bed squeaked violently and a woman whimpered. He wasn’t sure it was out of pleasure. He heard another guy in the room too, maybe another woman. Evan listened for a few seconds, turned on the TV. But couldn’t focus. “Was this his life?”

  It seemed in some films, plays or novels, couples put up with hell. And on the streets, he could see the strain and despair in the eyes of so many couples, or in the way they looked at each other or spoke. Or didn’t speak. Maybe living together did not necessarily involve happiness, just forbearance, quiet or not-so-quiet desperation. Maybe, as Stan said, it wasn’t about love at all. It was about infrastructure, coexistence. You did it for the kids or the mortgage payments or the fear of living alone or the belief you had maxed out your value in the marketplace of love … you weren’t worth any more than what you had.

  But he believed in love. Annie did too, she said. She liked candlelight dinners and fireside chats and cuddling in bed and the intimacy of quiet conversations in each other’s arms. So he steeled himself. The crazier she got the more he resolved to hang in. He had to make this work, time was running out. He could see himself at 70, sitting alone at McDonald’s, staring out the window into his past, between asking for free refills of his cardboard coffee cup.

  Life was too short. Spend it fighting and aggravated? Spend it alone? There had to be a third option. Find a way to put up with Annie. She loved him, he loved her, so he’d find a way. There was no choice. How many people his age were fine one day and diagnosed the next?

  “Well, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, we’re just going to run a few tests.”

  He just needed the right suit of armour and all would be well.

  Sam Shepherd was on the screen telling his tearful married daughter Naomi Watts that yeah, his marriage had had some rough spots, he thought of leaving a few times, even did once or twice but now, 40 years in, life was great. The marriage was great. Just took a little determination, thick skin, a heart buttressed by calluses, and maybe if not a motel room, a cottage down the highway as an escape hatch. Yeah, an escape hatch, Evan told himself as the woman on the other side of the wall kept whimpering and the bed kept squeaking and the guy kept yelling, “Come, come, come.” He just needed an occasional escape hatch and maybe the good times motel was not it. He wished she’d come already so the guy would shut the fuck up.

  Convinced he had found the path, the next morning he went home to face the inevitable scorn. And a few days later, a strange thing happened. Annie was railing at him for what was it? A dish in the sink, a contract she couldn’t find and therefore it had to be his fault or was it the time he left for the studio and didn’t call a courier and she had to call herself, that he simply walked away. He was not angry. He was not going to retaliate by again shoving coke up his nose. He just walked upstairs to read. She chased him to the foot of the stairs and called after him: “Don’t walk away. You dropped the ball. That was your job!”

  He ignored her. He closed the bedroom door, cutting off her tantrum. He had his music, he had his plays, he had his stories, he had his friends and the validation all that brought. So why did he give a shit what she said? He didn’t anymore. Trouble was, it broke his bloody heart.

  Evan was sitting across from Robert Bousquet in the Social Club, his Italian café of choice, where the neighbourhood’s army of freelancers, filmmakers, writers, translators and more translators, gathered to get out of the house, refuel, see people. All around was the caffeine buzz and the grinding espresso machine and Jay asking one sugar or two, allongé or short.

  Evan was trying to understand what he was hearing. This was a joke, right? Bousquet was a paunchy, cleanshaven, fast talking rock ‘n’ roller who diversified with some of his parents’ money to open a record label. He had about six local artists on his roster. A friend at the theatre had suggested Evan drop a couple of CDs of his songs at his office a few weeks ago, hoping to sell a tune or two.

  “I loved it,” Bousquet said. “I listened to them five or six times, the more I listened the more I liked them.”

  “You serious?” Evan was amused. The guy must be on drugs.

  “I’m not here because I’m desperate for coffee or company. Your songs are great. I don’t know where the fuck you’ve been hiding, but they’re monster tunes. I copied your CD and I have it in my fucking car. I dig it, man.”

  “So, like, what do we do?” Evan said.

  “Anything you want. Make a record, publish your songs, perform, you got the chops, guitar, voice, lyrics, melodies. I guess you’ve been playing alone so long you developed a unusual personal style. It’s all there, man. I got a nice studio.”

  “But I’m kind of old, aren’t I?”

  “Doesn’t matter with a guy. Look at Cohen or Dylan or Lightfoot. Nobody gives a shit, not even the chicks. It’s rock ‘n’ roll, man. Well folk, but still, you’ll get all the fucking chicks and dope you want. Up to you. I’ll do whatever you want, plus you got a story to tell, hidden songwriter, a playwright and journalist, comes out of the woodwork. It’s a PR dream.”

  He was going to be a rock star. Evan envisioned a dancing, hugging, ecstatic Annie when he delivered the news.

  He came in as if all was the way it was, hanging up his jacket and contemplating what the meeting had meant and how life was about to take a big course correction when Annie came out of her office.

  “How’d it go?” she asked.

  “You better sit down.”

  “He’s going to make you into a rock star?” she said, smiling.

  He told her the news. He was going to make a record and probably start performing. Bousquet wanted to start the sessions next week. He left out the part about groupies and drugs.

  Annie smiled some more.

  “That’s wonderful darlin’,” she said, standing up. “My little rock star. That’s great. I have to get back to work.” Then over her shoulder as she went back to her office:” Congratulations, darlin’. I’m proud of you.”

  Her “little rock star” watched her disappear up the stairs as he sat on the
sofa by himself, trying to relish the moment as long as he could. He phoned Franklin. He’d be happy for him.

  How much should a marriage weigh? What was the burden to pleasure ratio? And how were the scales supposed to be weighted? How much did you give compared to what you received? And how could you measure what you received? Did you weigh it by how often she picked up a loaf of bread for you or a pound of cherries or dinner? Was it a good relationship because he drove her each day to work when she had to be at an office or studio and she drove him to rehearsal at the theatre or to the studio when he was recording? Or ‘cause she liked to be at the shows?

  Did it matter that she preferred above all to eat in the garden, behind ten-foot high walls where nothing intruded but the scent of the flowers and the sound of sirens and car horns? And he liked to eat on the street, or sit on the stoop, watch the people, feel the city, get out from behind the walls? Have some fun? To him life was a fat juicy hot dog, with raw onions and spicy mustard. To her is was a stale crust of white bread, buttered with tears, dipped in wine.

  Did it matter what names you called each other when you fought?

  “Why do you always have to be such an asshole?”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Fuck you, too!”

  “I hate you.”

  Then two or three hours later or maybe days, it was back to the normal hand on thigh, “I love you,” routine. What about the bedroom blues? Where was fun sex on the ladder of marital fulfilment?

  So he checked the movies. After all, didn’t Steve Martin say in Grand Canyon all of life’s riddles were answered in the movies?

  “Was it sick, or is this normal? Perverted but normal?”

  He wrote When I Find My Love for the CD during a period of relative calm, but his subconscious was telling him a storm was coming. It always did. Resentment was brewing that he was at the studio every day, and not doing the runs to the bank, post office, grocery store, print shop, pharmacy, funding agencies, distributor, everything she was too busy to do that she insisted was his job.