“Not another winter. I just can’t make it through another winter,” she muttered standing up. “Look here,” she said nudging a depressed looking woman standing next to the bench. “There’s a dry corner right there on the bench. Have a seat. Go ahead. I ain’t got cooties.” Then placing the cardboard sign over her head to keep the rain off she turned to the little cluster of people standing there at the bus and said, “Don’t worry, I’m leaving. I can take a fucking hint! So long Carrie. See you later, Joe,” she said to the enormous smiling faces on the back of the bus stop bench. “I’ve enjoyed our time together. It ain’t everyday a gal gets to share a bench with radio personalities. You might even say we slept together. Thanks for the memories. You’re a fucking inspiration,” she hollered out as she turned the corner and headed down Fifth Street.
Vicky walked; she just kept walking, quickly as she had not walked for a long time. A new surge of energy carrying her forward, taking long quick strides like she used to. This sudden clarity, this epiphany had opened her eyes. It was all so clear. She knew what she had to do. And so she walked on with the cardboard sign still over her head to keep the rain away. She realized she didn’t need it anymore. It didn’t matter. She tossed the sign on the front steps of the old courthouse. She had to find the perfect place. She would know it when she saw it; a blind corner, an intersection slick with leaves and cold fallen rain. It was almost the perfect time as the twilight hour descended with the ever darkening sky. She’d heard that dusk was the worst time for drivers, with visibility being at its lowest.
“Time to shut down, Grandma. Time to shut down completely.” She passed the old Lutheran church, the oldest Protestant church in town. It was the church where Frank and Allison were married. Vicky remembered that day, and the year that preceded it.
*****
It had been a hard year, that year of 1985. It started off after the break-up with Francis, after she left Camelot with her memoirs and memories, and a small modicum of hope that she might make a new start; hopes that she could throw herself into her college classes, get an education, make friends who would be good for her, find a house out in the country to rent and maybe buy one day. She tried, tried to go on, tried to put it all behind her. But it hurt. It hurt too much. So she drank. She alternated between booze and cocaine. She was staying with Eddie so there was an endless supply of drugs. She came into work all strung out on coke one day and snapped at a customer. Then she got caught drinking on the job that same day; something she never would’ve thought she’d do. She was just trying to come down from the cocaine, trying to take the edge off. She was instantly fired. Less than a week later she was charged with driving under the influence. Her driver’s license was revoked. She was placed on house arrest and court ordered to go to AA meetings. Eddie was just too paranoid to allow her to stay at his place any longer; what with probation officers showing up at any given time of day. She left with no job and no place to go, so she moved into a women’s half-way house.
It had been a good move at the time. She got her hope back for a time. She got a job and made new friends. She took the bus and walked a lot. She felt healthy. She wrestled with sobriety. She wrestled with those twelve steps, never quite sure where her higher power stood with her or where she stood with her higher power. But she was able to grasp hold of something, something that kept her going and kept her sober one day at a time. She thought about getting baptized. She just thought about it. That was all. She stayed sober that time nearly six months, not her longest stint, one time she made it almost a year.
Then came the day she saw the engagement announcement in the paper. Frank and Allison were to be married in three months. All the hurt and disappointment came back, only this time with a sense of betrayal too. The man she loved and her best friend had taken up with one another. How could they do this to her? Her AA sponsor warned her against such emotional setbacks. She struggled between letting go of the pain and hanging on to the pain. She went back and forth.
Vicky’s sponsor told her not to be alone the day of the wedding. She advised her to go to meetings and to be with other people from the program on that day. She could have. Her sponsor called her that day and left a message on her answering machine. Vicky was home at the time but she never picked up. She knew her sponsor would advise her against going anywhere near the church that day. But she just had to. She didn’t know why. She knew it wasn’t right, that it was just some twisted fragment of bad feeling that would feed her sickness, like someone compelled to pick the scab off a wound. It wasn’t right but she couldn’t help herself. She just had to see for herself. That’s what she told herself; that if she saw them walk out the front door of that church all dressed in their bridal attire then she would know it was real. Then she could cry a little, curse a little, but then she could move on.
She got a pair of binoculars and parked in the bank parking lot across the street. She saw the limos parked out front. She saw the guests go in. She heard the bells chime. She waited. And then she saw them. Allison dressed like a bride, radiant and more beautiful than Vicky ever remembered her. And her Francis in a tuxedo, so handsome it hurt to look at him. They looked happy. They seemed oblivious to the cold December wind that blew at them as they skipped merrily together, arm in arm, down the front steps of the church. So now she’d seen it for herself. So now she could move on.
Only she didn’t really want to move on. She wanted to wallow in it. She wanted to make them hurt as badly as she did. She knew it was stinkin’ thinkin’, as they called it in the program, but she didn’t care.
She stopped at the liquor store and bought a bottle of Jack Daniels. She would just have one drink. She would wait until she got home. She would resist the urge to open it and take a swig in the car. After all, she just got her license back, she certainly didn’t want to blow it and lose it again. Just one drink after she got home, just enough to take the edge off all these hurtful emotions. It wouldn’t count against her sobriety if she just had one. She figured you had to get drunk for it to really count. And she wasn’t going to get drunk. A half a glass, that’s all, she thought. She figured that’s all it would take since it had been so long since she drank. Two or three sips was all it would take. No one would have to know. That’s all she’d need to take the edge off, just two or three sips. She would put the bottle somewhere inconvenient to get to so she wouldn’t be tempted to drink more. She would put it in the bushes outside. She wouldn’t want to go out there in the cold. But then if it got really cold it might freeze. She’d give it away. That was it! Maybe to the older gentleman down the hall. One of her neighbors would take it. If worse came to worse, she’d put it in her grandma’s hope chest and bury the key outside.
She went home, poured herself a drink and took out the newspaper clipping of the engagement announcement from a drawer by her bedside table. Her sponsor told her to rip it up, destroy it, get rid of it. She couldn’t help it though. She got some perverse pleasure out of taking it out of that drawer and re-reading it, her eyes carefully going over Allison’s picture with her perfectly cut and coiffed hair and her strand of pearls hanging down over the front of a simple but elegant top in the shade of something light and pastel. It said the reception was going to be held at the Lamasco Country Club. Just one more glass of bourbon, just one more wouldn’t count.
The next thing she knew she was laying out her nicest clothes, clothes she’d worn to a recent wedding. She did her hair and put on makeup. Just one more glass before she left. She was still sober enough to drive.
She woke up in jail the next morning, her memory of the previous day, sparse and fragmented; but her whereabouts and the heavy feeling in her gut told her she’d done something horribly wrong. She didn’t want to know. Wait a minute! She did want to know one thing. Had she killed anybody? Did she hit anyone with her car? No, to her relief she hadn’t done that. She had been charged with public intoxication and disorderly conduct. The cops told her she’d knocked over a Christmas tree at Lamasco Country
Club. She had no memory of it but it sounded like something she’d do. A part of her wished she’d done something worse. Not killed anyone, of course, but something bad enough for them to lock her up and throw away the key. Then maybe she could be saved from herself.
Eddie posted bail and she was released until her court appearance. It was the first of many overnights in jail and trips to the courthouse, the first of many tries at sobriety; soon to be followed by numerous trips to rehab, and countless visits to the hospital for that ailment or this injury. Later (after she burnt the last house she lived in to the ground) would follow an endless blur of crashing with strangers, staying at shelters and eating at soup kitchens.
*****
She stood in front of the Lutheran church and remembered. The sign on the church marquis read: If God seems distant, who moved?
“Okay, God. So blame it on me. I moved, but you didn’t exactly do anything to make me wanna stay,” Vicky said, the rebuttal coming from some corner of her brain that the alcohol had not yet absorbed. It was a cry from the old Vicky, locked between blaming a God who she hoped might rescue her but never did, and blaming herself for being so weak as to need rescuing.
Perhaps this was the perfect place, in front of a church that had shut her out, a church where she dare not enter because she wasn’t invited. It represented every church to her. It certainly was the perfect spot as far as that goes, but the traffic wasn’t nearly fast enough on this short city block between two stoplights. Drivers didn’t have a chance to get up much speed between the one intersection and the next. No, she would need to go to the highway. That’s the perfect place, she mused–nameless, faceless, no personality, nothing but billboards. Carrie and Joe can witness the whole thing as they look on and smile. The highway–how perfect! It’s where people abandon dogs they don’t want, she thought as she walked faster and faster, heading in the direction of the highway. By the time she reached the entrance ramp she was drenched from the cold rain and was trembling so bad, she had shaken herself numb. She was numb inside and out, as if nature itself had mercifully administered an anesthetic. But strangely she had this strength, this surge of energy to move her tired old legs up that entrance ramp. If only she had this kind of energy when she had the will to live then perhaps she wouldn’t be such a fool, a fuck up, and a failure. A car heading up the entrance ramp honked and swerved. Normally, Vicky would have flipped them off, but what was the point?
She made it on to the highway and walked a little ways on the shoulder trying to get up the nerve to do what she had to do. She was too safe, too safe walking along the wide shoulder there. She walked up a way to where the shoulder narrowed. That was good. It was scarier there, too scary. She was surprised there was any part of her left that still wanted to live. She clung near the guard rail. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. The guard rail was too much of a security, to have it right there, a safe haven to lean against, even the name, “guard rail” conjured up false feelings of safety from the potential plunge into the abyss. Ah, but if she stood on it then perhaps it wouldn’t feel so safe. She couldn’t be leaning or sitting. She had to take an active stance. Her legs felt stronger than they had in a long time. She compelled those legs to stand up, strong but shaky. It was a great thought but could she, an old sick drunk, balance herself on top of a guard rail? She used to be a strong coordinated girl. It would be like walking across the sturdy branch of a tree, something she did all the time as a kid before her fear of heights took over. She stepped up on the guard rail, still squatting, trying to get her balance, her arms moving to and fro trying to steady herself, then grasping back hold of the guard rail again. Slowly she stood up, surprised that she could do it, her arms circling backward then forward in an attempt to maintain her balance. Horns honked. Funny, she thought, they notice me now. Strangely, she found she did better with her eyes closed.
In that moment, her life moved quickly before her closed eyes like old family movies. Stuck in the tree with Bobby’s hand reaching out to her; on that ladder outside Francis’ window with his hands holding onto her. But now there was nobody there to help her down, nobody there to talk her down. She had to jump. It was the only way down.
She was on the roof of her childhood home, nothing but her father waiting below, screaming in rage, ready to beat the hell out of her. She was standing at the edge of the creek that ran through Bobby’s property, the place where she learned to swim as a kid. She was getting ready to dive for the first time. “Remember it’s shallow. Be sure to dive out. Dive out.” She would do a belly flop and it would sting as the water slapped her stomach. Just one small slap to the skin; it’s all she’d feel. She could move her legs this time. They weren’t paralyzed like before. She could move them. She did, like a swan diving into a lake, crashing into a window in the middle of a dark night.
Chapter 32
November, 2006
Allison
“It sure is a nasty day, isn’t it? I guess winter’s really on its way, huh?”
No reply, just sullen silence staring straight ahead; a vain attempt at conversation with her fifteen year-old son, Alex. It was so infrequent that she ever had him alone, pinned down, restrained so to speak, in such a way that he couldn’t walk away, couldn’t leave the room. And this was the one time he was not allowed the use of his cell phone or ipod so there was nothing attached to his head to tune out the sound of her voice; not now, not while he was driving. This was the last little bit of control Allison had with Alex, in this his fifteenth year of life, before he got his license but while he still had only a driver’s permit, making it necessary for her to be right there with him in the front seat when he drove. This was the closest in proximity that she could get to him. He had to hear what she said during those driving excursions even if he chose not to listen, like now. But still, maybe something she said would soak into his skin like a sponge tossed onto a puddle, maybe something would reach him and come to realization at some later date.
The boy’s large awkward hands gripped the steering wheel, hands grown nearly to man size but somehow out of place at the end of those still gangly arms; his adolescent brain having not yet fully coordinated the use of those hands. All the same, the hands reminded her of Frank’s hands and a pang of sadness stabbed her in the heart.
“Alex, your hands should be at ten o’clock and two o’clock.”
“Not anymore,” he said with a contemptuous sneer. “Shows how much you know. Your hands have to be at nine and three because of the airbags. If your hands are at ten and two and the air bag deploys, this is what’ll happen,” he said throwing his hands straight up to illustrate.
“For God’s sake, get your hands back on the wheel,” Allison said grabbing at the steering wheel.
“Chill out, Mom,” Alex said with a nonchalant smirk and a quick glance at her out of the corner of his eye. Of course he had learned so well from his father how to make her look like the hysterical one. Everyone says that adolescence is easier with boys, she thought. But she wasn’t sure. With girls you fight; that’s what they say (whoever “they” are). And indeed, Allison could see the beginnings, just a foreshadowing really, of that subtle breaking away process with Kristen who was now just a couple months from her ninth birthday. She had always been their little diva and was becoming more and more so, but at least Allison always knew what was going on in her head even if it was all exaggerated and overly dramatized. At least with Kristen the conflict was overt. And then there were her boys.
Matthew was eighteen, a freshman at Notre Dame, away at college. He had slipped away so silently and imperceptibly, like a wisp of a cloud dissipating into the air on a windy spring day. She hardly noticed it. All that hurt and pain was locked up inside somewhere but he kept it down by being the perfect child, now the perfect young man.
And Alex, their little Alexander Hamilton, their born leader. When she and Frank were together it was a battle of the wills between Frank and Alex; a harsh word spoken here, a terse word volleyed back, a push,
a shove, a backhand across the face in response to the smart mouth, fierce grunts accompanied by fists slammed against hard objects, quick and hasty exits from the room, followed by sullen and brooding silence. That sullen and brooding silence carried over since she and Frank separated ten months ago. It was what she lived with now on those weeks that Alex was with her; angry wordlessness, arms crossed, eyes continually looking away, when he did look at her from above his long dark bangs, it was a look like daggers.
The worst part of it all with Alex was the pervasive joylessness. The infectious laughter was gone, the reckless exhilaration that sometimes got on her nerves was gone and now she missed it. Over and above this sad picture of adolescent angst, Alex dragged around with him an all encompassing wet blanket of apathy that pressed upon him and weighed him down. It seemed to Allison that he could shake it off so easily if he wanted to. A quick thrust of the shoulders and a fling of the arms and the dreadful wet blanket would be off. That’s how easy it would be for him to snap himself out of it. But he didn’t want to. He wanted to drag the awful thing around with him because it was his security. It made everything more bearable to just not care.
And there wasn’t anything Allison could do, not really. Wasn’t it just that way as kids grew up? You had to relinquish the driver’s seat to them, but you still had to be there right in front, watching their every move, monitoring their speed, pushing on the imaginary brake, giving advice at every turn.
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