It was 4:56 when I got on the bus. I remembered that my headphones weren’t working. This was like the fifth set in a row that I’d broken. I was forced to be alone with my thoughts. I stared out the dirty window of DeCamp 66, the bus I would take home to see him. “Hello, Dolly,” he’d say. “How was the trip out?” I was on the bus fantasizing about having that moment again. My ears pricked up when I heard my dad’s name. I wondered if I was having a hallucination.
“Yeah, David Carr, he rode this bus all the time. He actually died at the New York Times building.” I felt like I could hear her shuddering. I glanced behind me to see who was speaking. She was a nondescript woman in her mid-fifties with brown hair. I guessed my family had now become a sort of urban legend. A bit of news for someone to talk about on their ride home from work. I considered shouting at her: “Maybe you shouldn’t say things like that when his kid is sitting next to you on this bus.” But instead, I kept my mouth shut.
The woman got off at her stop, and I did the same a few minutes later. I felt anxious as I exited but I made sure to mumble a thank-you to the driver. My headache would not relent and I wondered how useful that bottle of white wine the night before really was. I thought about the house. For my sisters, it represented a place of goodness and memories. To me? It was full of ghosts. I walked to the back porch and found it locked. I searched for the key in the cupboard on the porch. Nothing. I called Madeline, who was upstairs. I heard her tumble toward the door and felt irrationally full of rage. Why do I have to call to be let in?
We were sitting at dinner later when I asked my stepmom about the key situation. “The key was missing from the cupboard,” I said softly.
Jill put down her silverware and stared at me. “I am a woman who lives alone. I can’t have keys left out anymore.”
From a rational point of view, I knew she was right. She was undergoing this seismic change, and it was her house, not mine. I heard her continue on about the possibility of being assaulted while she was alone at night, but I closed my eyes, unsure of what to say next. “Okay, well, is it possible to get a key to use when I come home then?”
She looked down but stated clearly, “I don’t think so.” She said something about too many sets of keys being available for the house. My head started buzzing and I realized this was how it happens, this was how you get locked out of your own family home. I thought about starting an altercation, screaming at her that her child—my baby sister, Madeline—had a set of keys, so why should it be any different for her other daughters? Me and my twin. Just like on the bus, I kept my mouth shut.
That’s how families break apart after a death. Quiet, startling moments that define how you treat one another. I am my father’s daughter. I have a mother and a stepmom.
Meagan talked to Madeline and they made a secret plan to make house key copies to fix the problem. My baby sister handed me a silver key on a green ring to add to my keychain. I never got around to using it.
30
The Castle Without Its El Rey
“Times like this, it’s great to belong to a family like ours.”
Eventually, Jill asked us to come to New Jersey and clean out the house. It was time to sell. A five-bedroom colonial no longer made sense for a widow. I often wondered what Jill was doing at any given moment after my dad’s death. What was it like to wake up with someone for twenty years and then have them gone, almost as if they’d evaporated? I don’t ask her about these things. We’re not close enough for me to pose such an intimate question.
I dreaded every day leading up to that weekend. I tried to distract myself with work, but even there, tension was rising. I worked with a small team of dedicated and smart people with Andrew as our leader. The week before the move he gently asked how I was doing. “Terrible, the thought of it makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out.” I didn’t know what else to say. I knew many people had moved belongings out of their deceased parents’ houses. I was not a special snowflake and yet. The pain felt unique as ever.
I drove out there on a Sunday morning, a gnawing pain surfacing every few minutes in the pit of my stomach. It was one of those beautiful sunny days that seem to make a mockery of your grief. The whole world keeps moving and whirling while you stand still, unable to enjoy anything for even a minute. I was frightened at the prospect of doing something so final, taking away the last remaining pieces of the puzzle, dismantling the family we used to be.
* * *
—
Once we all arrived, it was smiles throughout. The Carr girls put on their battle faces, but in that Minnesota way that necessitates good cheer.
We started in the garage, a place of little sentimentality. Eight rakes, myriad sets of gloves, and the occasional “hoe” joke, and we were off to the races. The trash bags started piling up and sweat dripped from my forehead.
“Hey, this isn’t so bad,” I said to my twin.
She grimaced and softly said, “Well, good, but we haven’t gotten to the rough stuff.”
I peered into my former bedroom. All of my stuff from childhood was gone. My dad had politely requested that I remove my detritus when I hit twenty-five, saying he wanted the room back. I felt betrayed, but I complied. Afterward Jill lined my room with garment racks, and my twin’s room was filled with workout gear. Maddie was allowed to keep hers as is. Salt in the wound.
I soon realized that it was not my house. I was fortunate enough to have an office and a cramped apartment in Queens in which to store my memorabilia. It dawned on me that this was their home and they got to do whatever they saw fit in those rooms.
Meagan’s bedroom eventually became less of a repository for weights and more of a personal shrine. He’d placed a small desk, a chest of wooden drawers with a mirror attached, and a crappy Ikea couch that I knew he hated in there. But the walls were what made the room the room. Throughout his career, my dad had garnered hundreds of press badges: CNN, HBO, SXSW, Sundance, the Oscars, all with his smileless mug and the ever-important Times credential on a piece of laminated plastic. Maddie—whom my dad liked to call Matthew, as she was the most technically skilled among us and because we think he wanted, just a little bit, a son—had taken it upon herself to tape all the badges together. My dad hung her creation up over his desk, in a tribute to all the places he had gone and seen. The badges dislodged and the collage fell apart after he died.
There was a giant French poster of Page One: Inside the New York Times on the north wall, with the best picture of my dad in a Santa hat in front of it. Framed photos lined the wall with, oh yeah, his face. The Times had published a full-page ad of my dad with the headline FIND OUT WHAT OUR REPORTERS ARE READING. He is almost smiling in this picture, almost. Lena Dunham had sent him an illustration of him sitting at a Girls party, neck bent low, very thoughtful. He’d hung it on the wall with a sense of pride. When I first saw what was formerly my sister’s room, I have to be honest: I was pretty creeped out. Who makes a shrine to themselves? This felt borderline narcissistic.
But after he died, it was one of the few things that made complete sense. This was dad’s room, his memorial. This was exactly the right place where we could keep all of his stuff. Each of us could walk into the room and feel close to him. But now, it was time to dismantle it.
I spent most of the day mired in self-pity. I was packing up my remaining childhood effects, which had been left in the basement, marveling at how many collages of Dawson’s Creek one young girl could make. “Whatcha doing in here?” Meagan asked me.
I had not been good about spending time with the family as of late. I felt edgy and wanted to be left alone. I looked up and for the first time in a long time was able to see outside of myself. It occurred to me how hard this part must have been for her, my twin. The family home was not something I cared much about, but for Meagan it was a very intense source of comfort. My dad would always be the first to volunteer to pick her up from the airport while at t
he same time making sure something was bubbling in the Crock-Pot to welcome her home. To him, cooking meant love. It was a form of service.
Now, no one offered to pick her up. She had to ask. Meagan was empathetic to a fault. Blond, fit, and friendly, she could have been mistaken for someone who had it all figured out. I didn’t think she did, and I mean that in a good way. She was continually searching and probing the world for answers. Her PhD program was grueling, and she was underpaid. She complained only when shit really sucked, which it did often. Underneath the smile I knew she was struggling. Her depression was fully active and she was still not sleeping all these months later. She told me that she couldn’t manage to eat much, that she’d made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner many nights in a row, unable to put in the effort to make anything else.
We sat together in the shrine room, taking it in. I thought about asking her to hold me, but I realized it wasn’t one of those moments. She wanted to be left alone in her grief. Even together, we were alone.
Jill started to lay my dad’s clothes on the bed. Well-worn sweaters, stained white dress shirts. Then came the real magic: his T-shirts. Rock ’n’ roll, BBQ, and writing were common themes in his collection. My favorites included a WILL WRITE FOR FOOD shirt I made him, and a tee with an upside-down NEW YORK. I grabbed a bike shirt he wore constantly during his time on the trails, and the three of us lobbied for the remaining belongings. This was where things might get heated in other families but not in ours. Belongings did not make up our dad; it was just stuff.
I walked away with a New York Times hat, one of his favorite cashmere sweaters, and an armful of T-shirts. I knew I wouldn’t wear most of the stuff. But I would keep it safe.
31
If It’s Not Getting Better,
Consider the Alternative
In the months after my dad died I knew that my alcoholism was becoming worse, but I was unable to envision a future that did not include substances in some way. My dad was dead, and so I drank wine. A lot of it. That said, I knew that there had to be some safeguards in check, so I wouldn’t go completely off the rails. I developed a plan and wrote it down in my notebook. I would attempt some degree of sobriety, on occasion.
With this new plan in place, I knew I had a couple of challenges to get through over the next few weeks. My college friend Anna was coming to stay, and I desperately wanted to show her a good time. I had emailed her beforehand with a delightful bingo game of New York sights/events that we could take part in. I also told her that I would not be drinking. She had no problem with us not drinking, she wrote back; in fact, she preferred it. The second I saw that in the email, my stomach plummeted. I really didn’t want to go to a burlesque performance and order a seltzer. I wanted tequila, some delish champagne, or a gin and tonic, goddammit.
An avid talker and listener, Anna comes from good Wisconsin stock. She has neat brown hair, cut at her shoulders, and has a penchant for Bob Dylan. I always think of her with an apple in her right hand. She is a real sweetheart, and the last time she’d visited me I’d been a drunken mess. I promised myself it was not going to be the same this time.
We cackled like crones when she arrived at my newly tidied Brooklyn apartment. Yunna welcomed her and we drank coffee with creamer and had scones that I had picked up from the local bakery up the street, like a good adult hostess. I was going to get through this weekend with grace and dignity.
We headed to the Whitney and saw some new exhibits and then ventured to a Spanish restaurant for some tapas. My eyes glanced at the red wine available on the menu and my mouth watered. I found myself ordering a Diet Coke, and Anna was fine with water. Suddenly the bacon-wrapped date that came to the table tasted subpar. I just wanted some wine. And to then relax into the conversation with this lovely woman I hadn’t seen in years. I craved the easy intimacy that came with alcohol.
After dinner we headed to the Strand to peruse the miles of adventures and the books that held them. We separated among the stacks and I started to plot about how to pitch her on the idea of drinking. I practiced the words, all the while completely understanding that this was not normal behavior. On the L train back to my borough, I lied to her that my alcohol issues had been getting better, but that abstinence would not be a workable solution for me. I volunteered to pay for some fancy rosé to help us pregame before our glittering night at the Slipper Room, a notorious playground/burlesque club on the Lower East Side. She looked disappointed, but knew from years of experience that if I was going to drink, no one was going to stop me.
The second my hands gripped the glass bottle out of the chic winery’s mini refrigerator, I felt, in a strange way, calmer: I was going to have access to the medicine I needed. I bought two bottles of wine plus a case of Modelo beer, justifying the purchase by saying we had a couple of nights together and we would want to be stocked. I knew I would be drinking one of those bottles by myself, and I didn’t want to share.
The visit I had so carefully planned turned into an excuse for me to get as drunk as possible, as quickly as possible. Oh, and the meaningful conversation I sought at the tapas restaurant, the fact that I thought booze was the way to unlock some sort of intimacy, was a complete joke. I basically ended up ignoring this woman who had flown nearly a thousand miles to be near me.
After the show, back at the apartment and sufficiently buzzed, I ordered some cocaine. She wanted no part of it. I picked up my laptop and moved into the living room to type until late hours of the night, about absolutely nothing.
I woke up the next morning asleep on the couch, fully dressed, black eyeliner dripping off the sides of my face. I was so fucking hungover. I could barely take a breath without it hurting my head. But wait, we had lunch planned with Jasper at eleven. I groaned as I realized it was ten now. I didn’t want him to think anything was amiss, so I would have to rally and rally hard. I knew what might help. Gingerly, I crept over to the refrigerator and saw the untouched beer glinting at me. Trying to be as quiet as possible, I grabbed two out of the cardboard box and ran into the bathroom and turned the metal lock on the door to the right. I turned on the shower to disguise the sound of the beer opening. I nervously thought that either Yunna or Anna might hear, but I couldn’t worry about that. I opened the first one and sat on the lid of the toilet.
Oh my God, this is why people do this. It felt so nice and reassuring to introduce the alcohol back into my nervous system. I drank the beer in one sitting and stood up to look at myself in the mirror. I knew what had just happened was the next stage of a progressive disease. I was now drinking in the morning and hiding it. My blue eyes stared back at me. It wasn’t so unforgivable, was it? I brought the second beer with me into the shower and drank it while the scalding water beat down at my back. It was so soothing and I felt the internal warmth coming back to me; it was going to be okaaaaay.
I hopped out of the shower and stashed the beer cans in the wooden cabinet behind a giant box of tampons. I walked into my room, and Anna was sitting up and reading a book. She looked irritated, but I wasn’t about to get into it. I informed her that we would take a cab to Astoria, and Jasper would then drive us to an amazing, locals-only dim sum shop. I could tell that she was surprised that I was rallying, but she didn’t remark on it.
My buzz started to wear off the second we got to the dumpling shack. There was no way for me to order a beer. Jasper didn’t drink really, and I had never seen anyone order alcohol at this type of place. I started to panic, but tried to focus on the incredible food in front of me. After a bellyful of porky, doughy pillows, we went to the Museum of the Moving Image, and I felt the suicidal thoughts start to creep in. I had screwed everything up. Here I was in a cool, chic Queens museum, and all I wanted in life was unfettered access to another beer.
I headed over to a quiet corner and tried to compose myself. I found myself praying to God to help relieve me of this. We left the museum and went back to Jasper’s apar
tment. The consensus was that everyone felt tired, so Jasper suggested takeout. My first opportunity to have a drink and he had ruined it. We ordered Thai food, and I excused myself to go to the bodega and get some soda. I came back with beer and tried to get the both of them to have one. They refused and the room was quiet. I wondered just how much of a secret my drinking problem really was.
The weeks that followed felt like more of the same. Wake up, spend time on the computer researching various story ideas, turn on Sex and the City and crack open the wine at 6 P.M., fall slowly into a blackout. Yunna was home most nights but I preferred drinking alone, with no one watching. My therapist with the kind eyes told me that I needed to start going back to AA or she could not treat me. She said that I was medicating with alcohol, and it was medically or clinically impossible to work through my grief while in an active stage of alcoholism. She suggested an outpatient facility, but I took a look at my bank account and knew that there were other, life-centric things like rent and groceries I had to use that money for.
The last day I drank was not like all the days that came before it. There was no blackout or shoving match or lost job. It was just the depression I felt that came sweepingly into focus every single time I was hungover. I knew that sobriety had worked for my dad, and yet I still felt unwilling to apply it to my own life. My brain shouted at me that he had real consequences as a result of his drinking. He was a junkie who left me and my twin in our snowsuits in a freezing cold car while he went to a crack house to get high. Having a morning shower beer was pathetic—JV shit—and I should just shut up and learn how to drink. But the other, more rational side of my brain understood that I was at the end of some sort of road and that I would lose whatever HBO project I had cooking if I continued to consume alcohol in the way that my genes wanted me to. I also often thought back to my sister dragging me into the shower. That is where my life was headed.
All That You Leave Behind Page 18
