Recovery

by John Berryman

  ‘Why not, for God’s sake?’

  They were far ahead of the others lounging along. A hippie napped under an overpass, or maybe stoned. He was glad not to be stoned, as he had been at this hour and every hour last Sunday (indecent?!), with immediate Monday morning suicide in mind moreover.

  ‘They’re a peculiar outfit. Nobody has slips. They own a fine club building out on Whitney and when you’re elected—you have to be elected, you can’t just join, and believe me they look you over for weeks beforehand and you have to have two sponsors—they give you a key and say, “If you ever feel like having a drink, put the key in the mail.” ’

  ‘Well, there are groups all over town. So what? AA isn’t supposed to be selective: the desire to quit drinking, that’s all, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not with them. And I admit they have a very bad haughty reputation with other groups around the city. But partly it’s envy, Alan. Many of them not only have a great deal of money they’re very generous with, but have been dry twenty thirty thirty-five years. It was the second group established here. You don’t get that kind of security in most groups. Christ, guys turn up stoned, actually for meeting. A friend of mine who’d been through Hollins told me about a counsellor of his who once drank steadily for seven years, never missed a meeting. He’d stash a pint in his glove-compartment, drive to meeting, sweat it out, and when he got back in the car, open up and bottoms up. Arrive home bombed. His wife used to say to him, “What is this AA?” Funny—but what support would you get from a group like that?’

  ‘I see that. Also the authority. Frankly I hate authority including what I have to exercise, but unfortunately I respond to it. It wasn’t AA kept me dry two months this summer, it was fear of Dr Rome. Christ, I could have gone on reporting slips to my AA till Armageddon, some of the men even defended me when Ted and Mike Lewes gave me hell.’

  ‘That’s another thing—the wives. Wives come to meetings. They don’t speak to the Chapter—it’s big, by the way, maybe 150, and twice a week, not once, and everyone comes unless travelling—well, the wives sit around the wall and talk to each other. Nobody gets away with anything at Whitney. I don’t mean drinking, of course, but the hang-ups that lead to it. Watch out for the root.’

  Severance stepped over, hating the word ‘hang-ups’ and ‘up-tight’ and ‘get the garbage out’:‘I buy that too. My whole idea is not to be able to get away with anything whatever. Not that I can imagine concealing a slip. Oddly enough, I never did that, though of course I used to lie like the next jerk before I went into treatment. It’s slips I’m afraid of, not serious drinking. That’s out.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Just trumpeting, as usual,’ said Severance lightly, though he hadn’t been wholly pleased by Mike’s friendly but realistic and stopping question. He was willing to laugh at himself, slightly; God help anyone else who did. ‘I wonder if they’d take me.’

  ‘Two of the men come to see me, I could tell them you’re interested, they could look you up. Only remember, they’ve been dry since the Flood, they’ll be suspicious.’

  Severance did not like the idea of being suspected, or in fact looked over. With his determination? Still, he was impressed almost out of his mind with records of decades of sobriety. Anything that would improve his chances. Ruth might like it too, give her confidence. She was familiar with his polar positions: rebellion, awe. Both seemed built in, he was ready to defend both to the death. You had to have both. He saw damned little of either in most other Americans at the moment: just cop-out or sheephood, no independence or emulation. Hyperdemocracy, the sovereignty of the unqualified individual, added into a mass. He did sympathize with the young militants, enough to have addressed six thousand of them on Moratorium morning, but he saw them as incompetent, a threat to their own causes in abler hands: deluded by Thoreau’s hostility to the lessons of history, unable to use tradition modified. Even their bloody bombs were so inefficient that they went off too early and killed people. What he approved, what inspired him even, was their hopefulness, which he did not share, and their hatred of technology, which he did.

  Turned back now toward the hospital, he and Mike waited for the rest to straggle up. My word, Hasty’s was just two blocks north of here, the slowest liquor store in the city, ‘two quarts of Jack Daniel’s green, please—Dr Severance,’ Ruth once reckoned he spent over a thousand dollars a year there alone—well, he could afford it, except physically mentally morally and spiritually. ‘How are you, sexpot?’ He patted Delores’ sloping shoulder. ‘Stroll languorous enough for you? I like to walk.’

  ‘EXTENDED CARE’ came into view, so labelled in stone over the big glass doors. Everybody slowed down, if that was possible, except Severance keen to get back to work.

  ‘When I first arrived in London,’ he said to her and Mike, ‘the sign “FAMILY BUTCHER” over shops alarmed me. That portico ought to read: “RECOVERING ALCOHOLICS’ SLAUGHTER-HOUSE” and under it “DEFENCES PENETRATED, DELUSIONS VAPORIZED.” ’ He did not feel witty.

  Sunday was Dull Day for most of the forty-one patients on Ward W of Northeast Hospital, C——, Ohio, founded two years before, the first alcoholic rehabilitation center in the United States, or anywhere, with an out-patient family programme (estimated average degree of in-patient recovery: fifteen percent, the rest to be dealt with over two years of weekly Encounter-Group therapy). Dr Marc Rome’s latest guess was that half the graduates would make it—that is, never drink again; half the remainder would drink off and on, and the final quarter would die. Severance was suspicious of these figures, being hypnotized of course like everybody else in the country since General Washington by statistics, but capable of moments of lucidity and resistance. Some in-State patients had visitors, in their rooms or out in the crabgrass hospital grounds, boasting of their progress, pleading, joking, begging forgiveness, manipulating, rejecting, threatening to take off. At four-thirty Mary-Jane was reading Chapter V of the Big Book for the seventeenth time (she kept track, having gone back to pills after eighteen months clean and dry), bald Wilbur now sixty-three who had lived with his parents hating them since his first wife left him was arguing with his intoxicated father on the only ward telephone, Jeree was sitting on her bed screwing up her courage to go down to the Snack Room and get coffee, Letty was resenting her daughter’s not having called and her husband’s having called, Severance was writing obsessedly in his Journal.

  ‘St Paul’s.

  ‘Fear. Weak, it never occurred to me to go out for football. Fatal “sissy.” Bullied by Bone II and Frischer. First evening Assembly, name called: rose against the wall, expecting congratulations on my job (swept hall in New Building)—called down for dustpile put there unjustly after I’d finished. Have I ever recovered? Love (fear) of Fr Kemmis—long English walks—Mrs Dulon’s teas. Awe of the Old Man. Cameron mocking my “de prus en prus” and throwing erasers; rumor he fathered Effie’s baby—her husband’s first day in Latin III, “My name is Robert Denzil Hagster-Collins and I am here to teach Latin”—we roared—day we locked him in the classroom closet where we had a gramophone playing. Joe Laker the paddling Prefect. Mr Woodward’s story about Bill the S.A. savage and the poison berries—unknown death—later used, cooked, as therapeutic—man’s giant step; “sun-worshipping,” crawling on bloody knees with books open down the board-walk, across flagstones, around flagpole, and back. Finishing black coffee (sweet) after the masters left the lounge after lunch. Butts in icehouse. Reading after lights-out in slanted eaves-closet and under covers with flashlight. (Reading what?) Erection over Cornelia the matron in Latin II, suddenly called on, had to stand in aisle half-crouched. My jokes in the infirmary I didn’t understand (Boom-Du Rail-on, Boom-But Rail-er). Respect for John Ward. Wittenberg a friend? “Assume the attitude,” Moose-jaw used to say when we lined up in his room for paddling after lights-out. Sneakin Jesus the mathematics master coming up the stairs in the dark. Bobo (Effie’s Bobo—we held each other by the legs one afternoon
out the windows in the dorm to look into their bathroom upside down) waving his arms gently to get us down from the window-seats—“Don’t take off, Bobo”—flit idea. Sucked off Dopey Compson in the tool-shed one winter afternoon, he made me do it, largest pecker in school, once he had an erection in the showers and we came from everywhere to wonder. Suicide-attempt lay down across the rails, train coming, hauled off.

  ‘Scarcely anything else.

  ‘I do not remember one book read in those four years except that Latin grammar, though hundreds up till then (14) and most of all the many thousands since (not all). A fraction of zeal in physics.

  ‘Weird. Look into it into it, intuit into it, weird.

  ‘Ruth last night: “Your model was your very powerful mother … you have many feminine qualities (as I have masculine qualities—my father was my model)—I love them in you.” 1000 quarrels with Mother; utter admiration—my first literary subject, after the ASPCA gold-medal essay, my first prize eh? Or was it the state-wide spelling award? Second prize. The taller dark girl made “syzygy.” ’

  9

  ‘WELL, STACK,’ Harley began Group on Monday morning, ‘what happened this time? I’ve known you how many years is it, but you better fill the others in a little. You’ve been in treatment how many times?’

  ‘Eight times, Harley! Eight times!’ His heavy voice managed to be at once explosive and sad. Severance was shocked by that record and moved by the powerful ruinous sight of him: a large fierce face, furrowed and bald above slit eyes with great hollows under them, large working hands clenched on his thighs, elbows out. ‘I don’t know, I just don’t know. Thirty-five years with the company and they fired me the day I was discharged from Howarden this time. I guess I just started drinking! The wife was on my side but I just couldn’t stop!’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Keg. ‘Why did they fire you?’

  ‘I can’t understand it! Every week Eric sent in a report on my progress. It came as a blow, Harley!’

  ‘How many weeks were you there?’

  ‘Seven. They just kept me on and on. I guess the company couldn’t understand why I didn’t get out in three, like always.’

  ‘What’s that? How many times have you been at Howarden, Stack?’

  ‘Four times, Harley.’

  ‘And you still expected to be discharged in three weeks? How many patients are discharged after three weeks?’

  ‘Nobody!’ Stack sounded angry.

  ‘How about you, the previous times?’

  ‘Well, four months was the longest. They gave me a kitchen job but I went on going to lectures and all, they didn’t think it was a good idea for me to leave.’

  ‘And your boss put up with that, he took you back?’

  ‘Sure. We was good friends.’

  ‘But after all that history, you still expected to get out in three weeks?’

  ‘I just don’t understand it.’ Stack shook his big head.

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Harley. ‘But why did they let you go then this time, after sticking by you for so long?’

  ‘I’ll tell you, Harley: it’s a mystery. The wife and me couldn’t understand it!’

  ‘How did you feel about it?’

  ‘Oh, I may have been a little resentful at first. But right away—’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Keg broke in. ‘A little resentful! After thirty-five years they suddenly let you go—what reason did they give?’

  ‘No reason, Keg. They just said fired.’

  ‘And you took that? Did you go see him and ask why?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, I just—I don’t know why not! Stop picking on me!’

  ‘I never heard such crap,’ Keg said with disgust. ‘You’re unbelievable. First you expect to get out in three weeks when nobody ever has, then your company fires you on the day seven weeks later when you actually do get out, and you’re “a little resentful.” Right this minute you’re boiling with rage.’

  ‘No I’m not, Keg,’ Stack said in a strange, even sweet voice, glaring murder. ‘It was only because I couldn’t understand it, that’s all. It was a big disappointment to me and the wife, so I started drinking.’ His body was trembling with anger.

  ‘Well, God knows we sympathize with you, Stack,’ said Harley gently, ‘only there is not one single part of your story that makes any sense whatever. How do you feel about coming back into treatment for the eighth time?’

  ‘I’m going to try hard, Harley!’ shouted Stack. ‘I’m going to make it this time. I gotta! The wife is with me!’

  ‘You’ve got to get in touch with your feelings. If you knew how resentful you are, maybe you wouldn’t drink. You’ve got to learn to level with your feelings—get them out in the open. Do you see yourself as an angry man, Stack?’

  ‘Me? No, Harley. I am the quietest man there is, even drinking. Ask anybody.’

  ‘I seem to remember you drove to Illinois with a gun after your first wife left you. Is that true?’

  ‘It was only because of my daughter. I just couldn’t stand to have her taken away like that, with that other man.’

  ‘You didn’t plan to shoot your wife?’

  ‘Oh no, Harley. I put the gun in the glove-compartment and I never took it out, the whole time I was in Illinois.’

  ‘Did you see your wife?’

  ‘I couldn’t find her.’

  ‘What if you had found her?’

  ‘Well, I would have talked to her a little, just reasoned a little, about her taking my daughter like that, without saying anything.’

  ‘Then what was the gun for?’

  ‘I’m not sure I did have a gun, Harley. It might have been …’ His voice trailed off lost.

  ‘You’re still fogged-in, Stack. But think it over, about the feelings. You’ve got a lot of work to do.’

  ‘I know it, Harley! The wife is with me all the way!’

  Severance’s Journal

  To become a Jew-the wonder of my life—it’s possible! Rabbi Mandel is coming at 2:30.

  My uneasiness w. Xtianity came to a head in Mass w George this morning—but where? how? want company (Geo.—Mike praying in his room with his wife)

  Passion over Rose’s Frank saying to her at last (Line was him) ‘I love you’—L: ‘You never could say it to her before, could you?’—I thought of David’s wanting perhaps to say it to me, but held off by disappointment with me (rage, eh?)—baffled, hurt—how will he take my letter?!?

  Left and came to my room and incredibly thought of becoming a Jew. Always held it impossible because of inadequate concept of God—OK since Vin’s rescue—but hostile to Trinity—dubious of X, hostile to BVM—anti-Pope, deep sympathy with Church but not for me alone w God, yet not alone, one of many worshippers, like them exc in blood (who cares?)

  Somebody in Snack Room even said to me recently, ‘You ought to become a Jew’!!? (Irish and Jewish wives—my son, etc) perh nexus just now

  I feel apprehensive—joy but—can I? Will He receive me? I know I must prepare, be ready for all.

  The cantor’s letter of admiration helped me, unknowing by me.

  And: Jews don’t drink!

  S! D! (even the Mexican Jew in the Greek islands etc etc)

  All has pointed HERE.

  In my old story, a confrontation as Jew is resisted, fought, failed—at last given in to, symbolically. I

  So the ‘desire’ (was it?) is at least 25 years old.

  After that, the work on the Nazi doctors—abandoned —obsessed—perh now take it up again? my position certain.

  Unique horror of anti-Semitism.

  Closeness to Ed C, Erich, many, Riegels, Blooms, the Steins.

  Excitement over Isaak Babel! Buber! the Hasidim! Bloch’s music! Pascal’s Hebraism in ‘conversion’! WCW’s Jewish blood!

  How did I come to buy (found it lately in the attic) a very expensive leather-bound 4-vol Josephus?!

  For years contributed to, eagerly read mon
thly cover to cover half-unintelligible, Commentary?

  Love for Shafarman, first therapist I ever felt anything for. flourishing of Freud & Einstein!—‘die unverlier-baren Freunde’ special interest in Isaiah Berlin, Meyer Shapiro, Hannah, Mlle Weil etc Jewish girls—Sylvia B, Pearl K, Marilyn L, Judith R, Harriet R + my Hebrew effort—studies with Peretz Bargebuhr (write—still alive?) regular O.T. stint daily, at last, this year (till lately) unique devotion to Job—text, Stevenson’s Schweik lectures, translation fooled with for sixteen years

  People often think I look Jewish—resentment, liking

  10

  NELA, THE HEAD NURSE, was firmly constructed, a fresh-faced intolerant woman of forty with grieving eyes whose husband had wrecked a sky-rocket academic career with drinking and drugs and died of them. Severance took a dim view of head nurses and the prospect of her lecture on ward-discipline, which he had twitched through twice, did not turn him on; but he was in a do-or-die frame of mind this morning, alert to the possibilities of help lurking in the very motes eccentric in the sunbeam bright on Jeree’s hair-bun slumped in front of him, as he readied his ballpoint and pad.