“Lois,” I begin somewhat falteringly. “All these people kneeling down before you, kissing your hands and feet, telling you how you saved their lives, restored their families. Even God Himself would be flattered by such adulation. How must it make you feel?”
She turns and looks up at me with that cute but patient smile that says, “You’re probably not going to understand, but I’ll tell you anyway.” Then she reaches out and touches my hand.
“It’s not me,” she answers softly. “I’m only a symbol. It’s what Al-Anon has done for them, and I simply represent Al-Anon.”
I want to ask more, but she has answered it all. Here is a woman who truly knows herself and her own significance—and insignificance. If humility really is truth, then I was witnessing true humility. My mouth hangs open, but no more words come out. Then she gently pats my hand and says: “Now drink your tea and eat your cookies before Harriet comes back and gives us both the what-fors all over again.”
Lois Wilson may not have been a “liberated woman” according to today’s definition. “Renaissance woman” might suit her better. Indeed, if style, grace, intellect, and capacity for rebirth are the hallmarks of such a woman, then Lois Wilson qualified in every sense.
She believed deeply in commitment. That belief, and her undying love for her husband, are what kept her with Bill. That belief succored him through his raging torment with alcoholism and supported him in his struggle to recover. And then, after he and Dr. Bob founded AA, she came to understand how she herself was affected by the disease and reached out to help others in order to help herself.
While Lois went on to build Al-Anon into a worldwide fellowship for spouses and families suffering from the effects of alcoholism, there are many recovered alcoholics today who would quickly tell you that without Lois there would be no Bill Wilson, and without Bill Wilson there would be no worldwide fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and the many millions it continues to save.
To that enormous compliment Lois would respond in the very same way: “I am only a symbol.”
Lois Wilson died on October 5, 1988. My wife and I and our whole family, together with millions of other families around the world, miss her dearly. But while she is gone, her “symbol”—her spirit—will always live on through Al-Anon and the many other Twelve Step programs she and Bill inspired.
Acknowledgments
THERE ARE NO WORDS TO EXPRESS MY HEARTFELT THANKS TO Lois Wilson for the trust and confidence she placed in me and for the openness in which she shared her life and her experiences with me and my family.
The same holds true for my wife, Bernadette, to whom I owe an enormous debt of gratitude together with my three wonderful daughters and six great sons who have always given me their unconditional love and support even during those sometimes difficult growing-up years.
In acknowledging the important contributions of others to his book, it must be said that such a sensitive and truly historical biography such as this requires the care and guidance of a dedicated and experienced editor. I was indeed blessed to have such a wonderful editor in the person of Karen Chernyaev of Hazelden Publishing. Immense plaudits are due her and her great staff.
I also wish to thank Robert Hoguet, the president of Stepping Stones Foundation, Eileen Giuliani, our longtime executive director, Annah Perch, our new executive director, as well as the entire board of trustees for their generous support and for opening the Stepping Stones Foundation Archives for my research.
And, finally, many thanks to all my friends and fellow travelers who encouraged me to tell Lois’s story so that all those in need of hearing it can hear it. For that, I have been both privileged and blessed.
Reprint acknowledgments:
Photography is courtesy of the Stepping Stones Foundation, Katonah, New York.
Quoted material from Lois Remembers, © 1979, by Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., is reprinted by permission of Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc.
Quoted material from First Steps, © 1986, by Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., is reprinted by permission of Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc.
Al-Anon’s Twelve Traditions, © Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., are reprinted with permission.
Permission to reprint Al-Anon excerpts does not mean that Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., has reviewed or approved the contents of this publication, or that Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters Inc., necessarily agrees with the views expressed herein. Al-Anon is a program of recovery for families and friends of alcoholics—use of these excerpts in any non-Al-Anon context does not imply endorsement or affiliation by Al-Anon.
The Twelve Steps and brief excerpts from the book Pass It On are reprinted with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (AAWS). Permission to reprint brief excerpts from the book Pass It On and the Twelve Steps does not mean that AAWS has reviewed or approved the contents of this publication, or that AAWS necessarily agrees with the views expressed herein. AA is a program of recovery from alcoholism only—use of the Twelve Steps in connection with programs and activities which are patterned after AA, but which address other problems, or in any other non-AA context, does not imply otherwise.
The LOIS WILSON Story
1
When Will It End?
IT WAS JUST PAST FIVE-THIRTY WHEN LOIS WILSON SQUEEZED OUT of the jammed subway car at the Fulton Street station and elbowed her way through the rush hour crowd up the stairs and into the clamor of downtown Brooklyn under a steady downpour. It was almost dark by now, and the street lamps and colorful store lights glistened in the puddles.
She slid her purse up her arm to open her bumbershoot, the colorful term she liked to call her umbrella, perhaps because it brought back warm memories of her mother and the many “old-fashioned” words she refused to discard right up to the day she died. That was Christmas night, 1930, just two short years ago. Tonight it seemed like yesterday.
Lois’s lovely face looked pale and drawn as she paused for a moment to take a deep breath. She had hoped to leave her job at Macy’s department store earlier that afternoon, but the onset of the holiday season coupled with staff cuts due to the Depression had every sales clerk doing double duty. After a moment, she turned and headed down Atlantic Avenue toward the quiet residential section of Brooklyn Heights not far away.
Before she had gone two blocks, the heavy rain running off the umbrella and onto her shoulders and back made her coat feel like two tons of wet cotton. That, and the pounding headache she’d had since early this morning, brought tears to her soft brown eyes.
“When will it end?” she thought to herself. “When will life get just a little bit easier?”1
The din of the downtown area lessened perceptibly as Lois turned into Smith Street and quickened her pace toward Clinton Street and her home six blocks away. But the headache was getting even worse. She glanced across the road and noticed that Slavin’s Drugstore was still open. She hesitated, squeezed her fingers against her nose, then reluctantly crossed and made her way through deep puddles to the neighborhood pharmacy—reluctantly because Slavin’s was one of her husband Bill’s hush-hush bootleg establishments in this era of Prohibition. And while Barry Slavin, the rather handsome bachelor who owned the pharmacy, feigned ambivalence to Bill’s “drinking problem” and never said a word about it, Lois felt rather uncomfortable that he knew so much about the personal problems it created in their marriage. She knew he heard stories—both from Bill and the neighborhood gossipers. In spite of all this, she liked him.
Barry was just pulling down the shade on the front door and placing the “Closed” sign in the window when he spied Lois approaching. He smiled and opened the door halfway. She could see that most of the store lights were already out.
“I was sneaking off early, what with the rain and all,” he confessed. “But if you need somet
hing, Lois . . .”
“Thanks,” she replied. “I . . . I have a splitting headache. I could use some aspirin.”
“Sure.” He pulled the door all the way open. Lois entered. Then he locked the door behind her but left the lights out. It was a rather large store with the pharmacy to the rear, a long soda fountain counter on one side, replete with black leather stools, and cosmetics and other sundries across the way. Barry directed Lois to a seat at the soda fountain, then headed for the pharmacy to get the headache pills.
What happened next was something Lois Wilson never shared with anyone for many years, and only then with her husband and her closest friends. It remained one of her deep, dark secrets, perhaps because she couldn’t honestly say whether she had unconsciously invited the incident or was so dispirited at the moment that she simply let it happen. Either way, it filled her with guilt, anger, and shame.
Lois was a product of her time, born near the turn of the century. She was raised by a loving but spartan disciplinarian father and deeply religious mother to be a lady of purity and grace. Certainly the Roaring Twenties had a bit of an influence on her, but now it was the difficult thirties and social morality had come roaring back, tightening behavioral standards for troubled, poor, and struggling Americans. Prohibition was just one example. “Loose women” were few and far between these days, at least in Lois’s small and shrinking world. It wasn’t that she was naive. She simply believed that when a man made “a pass,” particularly at a married woman, it should lead the lady to question her own actions and sense of values rather than respond to such false flattery, which could only exacerbate the situation.
But here at the soda fountain in Slavin’s drugstore on this wet and chilly December evening sat a tense, fretful, lonely, and attractive forty-year-old woman beaten down by recent disappointments, including a husband whose love she questioned and whose out-of-control drinking she could no longer understand or deal with. So when Barry exited the pharmacy and walked toward her with a remedy for her headache, she was not only vulnerable, she had few defenses against any remedies he had in mind for the other problems in her life.
His warm, innocuous smile put her off guard. He went behind the soda fountain, filled a glass with water, then came back around and stood next to her. He opened his hand. She took the two tablets, then the water, and swallowed them. He smiled again, said she could pay next time, and handed her the full bottle of aspirin tablets. She put them in her purse.
“It’s all the stress and tension, isn’t it, Lois?” she recalled him commenting as he moved behind her and began to gently massage her neck and shoulders. It felt wonderful, so tingly and relaxing. No one had done this for her in a long, long time—maybe not since the night after their motorcycle accident when Bill realized her neck was so sore she couldn’t sleep. He began to rub it softly and seductively and, despite all their aches and pains, they made love in that old dilapidated hotel room in Dayton, Tennessee.
She closed her eyes and moved her head and shoulders slowly back and forth with the motions of Barry’s strong hands, hoping he wouldn’t stop right away. She could smell the fragrance of his expensive cologne, not the harsh, nosebiting stench of Bill’s bootleg liquor. She could feel her muscles loosen as the tension seemed to ooze down her arms and out through her fingertips.
His left hand continued to massage her neck as his right hand began to move slowly down her back. He said something like, “I don’t understand. A beautiful woman like you letting yourself get into a situation like this.”
Lois didn’t reply, but suddenly she felt the tension returning. She heard Barry continue: “We both know Bill’s problem. And you working all the time to support him. Never going out having any fun. It’s admirable, I guess, to sacrifice like that, but . . .”
She could feel his breath close to her ear. She opened her eyes. His face was next to hers. Then he kissed her gently on the cheek.
Lois’s first reaction was panic, but only for a brief moment. Then she suddenly, almost involuntarily exploded into rage. She shoved him away and leapt from the stool. The pharmacist appeared stunned, wondering how what he thought was an unspoken yes could turn in the flash of a second to a resounding no. “How dare you!” she recalled screaming at him. “How dare you!”
Her hand came up to slap him. Perhaps it was that shocked, I-got-caught-in-the-cookie-jar look on his face that stopped her. Or perhaps it was her own sense of guilt. Either way, she just glared at him for a moment, then turned and charged toward the door. It was locked. She pulled and yanked at it until Barry, now shaken and embarrassed, finally came over and flicked the bolt. Lois flung the door open and stormed out into the still-pouring rain, her unopened bumbershoot clutched tightly in her clenched fist.
Lois half-ran, half-stumbled along those next few tree-lined blocks to Clinton Street, sloshing through deep puddles, almost bumping into people who looked askance from under their umbrellas, probably wondering what emergency might have befallen this poor lady on this terribly dank night. The tension had now given way to sheer anger and was rapidly turning into shame and self-reprisal for allowing such a thing to happen. Her mind was spinning. She couldn’t collect her thoughts. Maybe she didn’t want to collect her thoughts, not just yet anyway.
Her low-heeled black leather shoes were filled with rainwater by the time she reached the long cement steps that led up to the front door of 182 Clinton Street, the large, impressive brownstone that was her birthplace and childhood home, and where she now felt like a sponging guest who had overstayed her welcome, even though she knew this not to be true. But feelings often have nothing to do with truth. The simple fact was that she and Bill had lost everything over the past four years because of his drinking, and they had no place else to go. So, at her widowed father’s behest, she swallowed her pride and moved back into this stately old house. Bill had little choice. Besides, it seemed that he was seldom there anyway once he was able to gin up enough money to get started on another toot.
She grabbed the newel on the stoop railing and stood there for a long moment trying to catch her breath. The rain mixed with her tears as she stared up at the house and its dark, curtained windows. She was soaked inside and out, and her hair hung like a wet mop under the drenched pillbox hat that now lay almost flat on her head. But she gave no thought to her appearance. It was her insides that were churning, her heart that wouldn’t stop pounding, and her stomach that was on the verge of nausea. A chill ran through her, so she turned and pulled herself slowly up the steps to the double glass door entrance still decorated with her mother’s hand-sewn lace curtains. Fumbling in her purse, she found the key, then dropped it from her trembling fingers. After several tries, she finally opened the door and entered the large dark foyer as if in a trance.
As much as she resisted them, her thoughts began to come together, and she started to weep once more. Then she yanked the wet pillbox hat from her head and flung it against the wall. It took a few more moments for her to turn on the foyer light and move slowly down the hall and into the kitchen, her clothes dripping water behind her.
Her mind was racing now. She yanked the string on the overhead globe light, grabbed the teakettle, and filled it at the sink. Then she moved to the stove. The water running down her hand from her soaked clothing fizzled the flame on the first matchstick. It took two more to light the gas. All the while she kept thinking, “It can’t go on like this. It can’t.”
She knew instinctively that Bill wasn’t home. She would have either tripped over him in the doorway, or he would be lying unconscious on the hall stairs, unable to make it up to their bedroom on the second floor. That’s the way it was. That’s the way it had been since . . . she tried to remember, but too many thoughts were coming all at the same time.
The chills started again, this time running deep into her bones. She had to get out of these soggy things before she caught pneumonia. First the coat. She hung it
on a hook above the large washbasin to let it drip dry. Next the shoes. They needed to be stuffed with newspaper so they wouldn’t shrink too much. The newspapers were piled next to the old vegetable bin in the corner. It took only a few moments to do the job, but it distracted her mind from the things she didn’t want to think about. Now, upstairs and out of the rest of these wet clothes.2
Her bedroom flashed memories almost every time she entered it, particularly since moving back into this old house . . . God, what was it . . . almost three years ago now? She couldn’t believe it. This had been her room growing up on Clinton Street. She shared it for a while with her little sister Barbara, because, well, after that horrible accident, somebody had to watch over her every night. Being the oldest and most dependable, Lois was assigned that task. She didn’t mind. She loved Barbara and felt so deeply sorry for her.
Lois was eight years old when it happened. She was playing near the lake at the family’s summer place in Vermont when she heard screams coming from the cottage. They were so terrifying she was afraid to go inside. Barbara, who was two, had found a vase filled with long, decorative stick matches and was playing with them under the kitchen table. She managed to strike one on the table leg, and the beautiful colored flame that flickered from the match immediately set her white lace dress on fire. Fortunately, Annie the cook heard the child’s agonized screams, pulled her out, and covered her with towels to douse the flames. Annie was burned herself, but she saved Barbara’s life.
It would take some years of treatment and skin grafts to fix the deep burns on her sister’s face and hands, but she eventually recovered surprisingly well. Meanwhile, Lois would lie here in her bedroom every night watching her baby sister toss and turn and often wake up crying. She’d bring her a glass of water, stroke her soft brown hair, and perhaps read her a story until she went back to sleep.
As Lois slipped out of her dripping dress and undergarments, she thought how ironic it was to be back in the same room, taking care of a drunken husband in the very same way.
The Lois Wilson Story Page 2
