When I'm Not Myself

by Deborah J. Wolf

  Home.

  She flipped open her cell phone and called Leah.

  “Hello?” Leah’s voice sang through the wire, clear, confident.

  Nothing good could come from sharing her secret with Leah, either. “Hi, sweetie.”

  “Are you home?” Leah asked her, breathless.

  Cara sighed, “Yes. Thank God, yes.”

  25

  Katie wanted a drink. It hit her first thing in the morning and the feeling was so familiar that she fell back in step with it, like a habit that she indulged in without even thinking about it. She went immediately to the bar, which had been emptied out. Then to the refrigerator. Cara had dared to keep a bottle of wine—just one, a Pinot Grigio, not one of Katie’s favorites—on the top shelf. It had been opened and recorked, and stood ready to be drunk. Her mother had only had one small glass; three-quarters of the bottle remained untouched. Katie lifted it from the top shelf in the refrigerator, grabbing it around the neck like she wanted to strangle it. She pulled out the cork and let the pungent smell from the bottle waft under her nose.

  She drank from the bottle, tipping her head back and closing her eyes the way a teenage boy drinks from a milk carton after football practice. The wine gurgled in the bottle and dripped down the sides of her mouth, back along her chin and down her neck. She drank the whole thing in one long gulp, coughing only at the end when she came up for air. She placed the bottle down on the countertop with a hollow thud and looked around the kitchen, waiting for someone or something to strike her down.

  Everyone had told her how proud they were of her. Everyone. Her mother, her friends, her teachers. Even her father, as he thrust the keys to the car at her. His voice had been muffled and very low, but pride seeped through his words.

  She’d let them all down. She’d done it purposefully and without too much consideration, the way she knew was habit for her. She knew she should have called her sponsor but she dismissed that thought immediately, too.

  Katie leaned back against the bar stool and stared down the empty bottle. She had been sober a long time; forgetting what it felt like when alcohol did its trick on her, the way it came over her. The words on the label jumped and jumbled around her, effects of the wine settling in and numbing her brain, singeing it at the ends. She hadn’t had a drink in over three months; she had the ninety-day pin to prove it.

  The first few days with her father had been okay. Jack was walking on eggshells, carefully watching over everything she did. She didn’t mind, not much, anyway. She was ready for a little attention from her father. Her brothers pretty much ignored her, but Claire was all over her, plump with love and admiration. Even Barbie, so enormous that she could barely get around anymore, was tolerable. In the end, coming to stay with her father seemed like the right thing to do.

  When her mother came home, Katie went, too. She went back to her bedroom and back to school and back to her life. And everything about that seemed slightly off kilter; just enough so that she couldn’t pinpoint what it was that was missing. But something was definitely missing.

  “DAMN IT!” she screamed, bolting out a shriek that shook the windows. “Damn, damn, damn.” She went to the small guest bathroom and folded herself into a ball on the floor. The tiles were cool and hard on her knees and elbows, but she lay there anyway, hugging herself. She wanted to throw up, to rid her body of the alcohol.

  It was the alcohol that had been missing. She knew it. She’d figured it out the day before when she got up and got dressed. The feeling had been there again—that missing feeling—where she didn’t feel quite herself. It was the same feeling that had been following her around since she got home, like she had missed someone’s birthday or forgotten an important assignment at school. She couldn’t shake it, couldn’t quite figure out how to chase it away. When she was done dressing, she stood in the middle of her bedroom, thinking what it might be before she pushed off the thought and reached for her backpack, unzipping the middle section and looking for a beer or a thermos of vodka, whatever she might have stashed there.

  And that’s when she knew. It was like yesterday, the way she went looking, the bad habit slipping on her like a silk glove. That’s when she knew that it was the alcohol that had been missing, gone from her life like a friend who had passed on, a friend she desperately longed to have back.

  When it was there, when she stood in the kitchen in bare feet, her jeans slung low across her tiny waist, the bottle poised at her lips, she felt like her old self again. Even as she crouched over the toilet, forcing herself to throw up, dabbing at her face with a clean washcloth to clean up the vomit that had splashed back at her, she felt once again like herself.

  She’d grown to hate this version, this image. Familiar as it was, she’d grown to despise the person she’d left behind.

  Cara found her there, an hour or so later. She’d been out running errands, the boys to their baseball games, Claire to a playdate. Cara came into the house in a hurry, laden with groceries she’d picked up and a leaking plastic jug of milk that she set in the sink. She spotted the empty wine bottle sitting on the countertop and froze; sweat brimming above her lip and at her armpits. She wasn’t ready for this, not again.

  Cara dropped her keys on the kitchen table and walked calmly through the house.

  “In here, Mom,” Katie called when she could hear her tennis shoes padding across the floor. “I’m in here.”

  “Sorry, Mom,” Katie said, bowing her head. She was washing her face, running an ivory washcloth over her neck and around her lips. Residue from vomiting stung the back of Katie’s throat and she desperately wanted to go and brush her teeth. Instead she cupped her hands under the faucet and lifted the water to her mouth, rinsing and spitting.

  “What happened?” Cara asked her, a whisper barely escaping her lips.

  It was the last thing she expected, to come home to this. But Katie’s drinking, whenever it started again, always surprised her, always left her wondering how it was she had missed the signs, again.

  Katie met her mother’s eyes through the reflection in the large bathroom mirror. Cara stood just behind her, to the right and over her shoulder. It reminded Katie of the way a guardian angel would stand next to you, watching over you. Disbelief registered on Cara’s face. Katie wondered why she was so surprised, why she wasn’t angry, screaming and dragging her away. It might have been easier if her mother was angry, if she’d given Katie something to yell back at.

  “I drank your wine. The whole thing. I drank the entire bottle start to finish in about a minute and a half.” Katie watched for the expression on her mother’s face to change, for disappointment to come creeping back in.

  “But why?” Cara asked her.

  Katie turned and faced her mother. She was almost her same height now, just an inch shy, but they came eye to eye anyway. Her mother stood very close to her, blocking the doorway so that it would be very difficult for Katie to run past her if she wanted to; she didn’t.

  “I thought I needed to. I can’t explain it, really, but ever since I came home, here to the house, something has felt like it was missing, like it was supposed to be there and it wasn’t. And then yesterday I went looking for something to drink. I went looking in my backpack for something to drink because it just felt like that was what I was supposed to do. There was nothing there, of course, but just looking for it, just like I used to do every day, well, it just felt like that was part of who I was, of what defined me.

  “I couldn’t chase it away, Mom. That feeling just kept following me around all day. So this morning, when I got up, I just gave in to it. It just felt like that’s what I was supposed to do. There wasn’t any reason, really.”

  Cara wanted so badly to take Katie in her arms. She wanted to wrap Katie’s rigid, tense body with as much warmth and comfort as she could, but she knew that wouldn’t solve anything, that doing so would only leave Katie feeling like she wasn’t being listened to, that Cara hadn’t heard her.

  Cara understood
what her daughter was saying. For the first time, she really understood her. It wasn’t much different, really, than what Cara had felt herself, the days after Jack was gone, when she’d reached across the bed for him in the morning or picked up her cell phone to call him about something ordinary, what to have for dinner or where she’d be when he got home. It was a hard habit to break. Identifying it as such was the first step.

  “How did it make you feel, Katie? After you drank the wine. Did you feel better? Did you feel more like your old self?” Cara was careful with her questions, cautious not to upset Katie. She’d seen this movie before; she didn’t want Katie pushing past her and stomping out the front door.

  Katie shrugged her shoulders. “I remembered what it was like to drink like that. It felt just like it always did; it felt good.”

  They weren’t the words Cara wanted to hear, not at all. They were the words she had feared, the words that she didn’t know what to do with.

  “But then,” Katie continued, “I realized that I didn’t particularly like that person. Even though it felt familiar, like something that fit me perfect, it wasn’t who I wanted to be. It wasn’t what I wanted to be. Not anymore. I can’t be that person anymore, Mom, I just can’t.” Her face dissolved, her lips trembled, and her shoulders shook. “I made myself throw it all up, Mom. I couldn’t stand it. It was like poison in my body. I didn’t want to drink it anymore, I just couldn’t.” She covered her face with both hands and stood there sobbing in front of Cara.

  Still, Cara held back from taking Katie in her arms. She wasn’t entirely sure she trusted her, not one hundred percent. She wanted to believe her, God, she wanted to believe her, but she wasn’t completely convinced.

  Cara dug her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. She wanted Katie to own this, all of it. She wanted only to be on the sidelines, as coach, to help her figure this out. So she asked her, “What do you want to do, Katie?”

  It took Katie a minute to catch her breath. She was crying harder now, so hard that she had to sit down. She lowered the toilet seat lid and took a seat; her arms crossed at the chest she doubled over, rocking back and forth. Cara handed her the Kleenex box, plucking one out. She took it and balled it up in her hand, wiping one eye, then the other.

  “I don’t know, Mom. I was thinking I should go back to the center, you know, and check myself back in.”

  “That’s one option, yeah. You can do that. If you want.”

  She looked up at Cara. Her face was blotchy and her eyes were rimmed in red. “You’re not going to make me?” Katie asked, sniffling. She had half-expected her mother to haul her out of the bathroom when she found her and insist that she do just that.

  “No, Kate, I’m not. You have to do something; you can’t just let this go. But I’m not going to make you go back there. And, quite frankly, I think you’re on to something.”

  “How do you figure?” Katie wiped the back of her hand across her nose and cleared her throat.

  Cara slumped to the floor and leaned against the wall, pulling her knees up to her chest. “I remember when your father left. For the first few weeks, I didn’t know which end was up. I didn’t know what normal was supposed to feel like because nothing, and I mean nothing, felt normal anymore. It was as if I were a completely different person, that I had been forced to be someone that I had no idea how to be. Everything around me was changing and I couldn’t get my arms around any of it. It was the most surreal feeling, quite frankly.”

  Katie nodded her head and listened intently.

  “I don’t remember, really, what happened, or I guess when it happened that I started feeling like my old self again. Only it wasn’t my old self at all. It could never be my old self. When your dad left, he took part of my identity with him. So much of who I was was built around who I was with your father. I had no idea who to be without him.”

  “But you figured it out, Mom, didn’t you? You figured out how to move on.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I have. But it’s not who I was, Katie. I had to be okay to be someone new, someone different. And that’s what you have to do, love bug. That’s what you have to do. There’s a new girl in there who can get through a day without downing a bottle of wine before nine o’clock. She’s just as pretty and smart and sassy and everything as you are, but she doesn’t need a six-pack, or three or four shots of vodka because it’s part of who she is. She’s defined by other things, other characteristics that the people who know her, really know her, love about her.”

  Katie took a deep breath, shuddering. She caught her reflection in the mirror, stopping to really look at the person staring back at her. She was without makeup and her hair was disheveled, sticking up this way and that. She turned her attention again to Cara, looking down at her from where she sat. “Will you help me, Mom?” she asked. “I really, really need your help.”

  Cara wanted to scream, What do you think I’ve been trying to do? All this time. What do you think this has been like for me, Katie? But she knew that wouldn’t help, not in the least. And besides, this was the first time Katie had asked for her help, the very first time.

  “Of course,” she said to her daughter, lifting her body from the floor and holding her hands out to Katie. Katie took them and Cara pulled her up from the toilet, into a warm embrace that kept them there together, wrapped tightly in each other’s arms, for a long while.

  26

  A call bolted Cara awake. Panic washed over her in the thirty seconds before she managed to grab the phone and bark into the receiver, her heart pounding with fear that something had happened to her daughter. It was Paige.

  “Meet us at the hospital, Cara. Please. I know it’s the dead of night, but I really need you there. I can’t do this without you guys. Call Leah for me. And Mel, too, if you think she’ll come down from the city.”

  Cara could tell Paige was in pain. Her breath was quick and she was insistent, almost frantic.

  “Mel will be there, sweetie, without a doubt. We all will. Calm down, honey. Is Dennis taking you to the hospital?”

  “Uh-huh, yeah.”

  An hour or so later, they walked into her hospital room; Cara, Leah and Melanie arm in arm. Paige was peeing, squatting on the toilet with the door open, Jerry Maguire playing on the small television screen above her bed.

  “ ‘You had me at hello,’ ” Melanie said to her, smiling and quoting the movie verbatim before she got a good look at Paige.

  Paige stood, lifting her hospital gown to adjust one of the wires from the fetal monitor that had been disconnected so she could use the toilet, then settled the gown back over her enormous belly.

  “Oh, my God, Paige. You are fucking huge,” Melanie exclaimed, gasping.

  “Melanie!” Leah admonished. “For Christ sake, she is about to give birth.”

  “Ain’t no way that thing is coming out without a little help. My Lord, what have you been eating? Are you sure you’re not having twins?”

  To their horror, Paige lifted the gown again, pulling it straight up over her rock-hard belly and then letting the gown fall, cascading over her like a tent.

  Mel closed her eyes and shook her head as if she was trying to shake off the image. “Let me say it again,” she started. “Thank God it’s you and not me.”

  “Paige, c’mere, sweetie,” Cara crooned, encouragingly. “Let’s get you back to bed. Just ignore the self-centered bitch with the twenty-two-inch waist. She can’t remember what it was like to be basking in the glow of childbirth, ready to bring a beautiful little baby into this world.”

  Paige waddled to the bed and hoisted her butt on the edge of the mattress. “It’s okay, Cara. If they don’t frigging get this baby out of me soon, I’m going to reach up there and take care of things myself. I mean it was all fun and games when we started this nonsense nine months ago, but this is ridiculous. I’m sort of over the basking and glowing part, quite frankly. Let’s get on with the show.”

  “Where’s Dennis, Paigey?” Leah asked, her voice syrupy sweet
and soothing.

  “Ice chips. He went for more ice chips.” Paige grunted this out during what appeared to be a fairly significant contraction.

  “Ice chips,” Mel stated. “There are exactly zero good reasons to chew on ice chips at a time like this. How about a shot of tequila, Paige? Vodka? Scotch? My God, the kid is cooked already. There’s nothing you can do to hurt it at this point.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it.”

  Dennis bounded into the room, two plastic cups full of ice chips along with a pink plastic pitcher of what appeared to be more. “Hey, sweetie, how’re you doing? Everything okay?” He was singsongy and light like he’d been dipped in sugar, but if you looked closely, you could see him cracking at the edges with concern.

  “Did you bring the scotch, Dennis?” Mel chided immediately.

  “Huh? Scotch?” Dennis looked puzzled. “Oh, you’re kidding. Funny, Mel, that’s really funny.”

  “Whoa, buddy, loosen up. It’s a baby. She’s going to be fine.”

  Dennis was already at Paige’s side, scooping ice chips with a spoon and ladling them into Paige’s open mouth. “I can do this myself, Dennis,” she said, taking the cup and spoon from him. “I’m not sick, I’m just in labor. God help me if I ever decide this would be a good idea again.”

  It was Cara who suggested coffee and Leah who gently nudged Dennis toward the door. “Just a few minutes, Denny. Let’s take a break. She’s nowhere near ready to go yet, so you’ve got plenty of time.” They led him to the door, guiding him by his elbows, one on each side.

  “Are you sure, sweetie? I’ll just be down in the cafeteria, if you’re okay here. Are you . . . ?” But he never got the rest of the words out. The door swung open, then shut, and Dennis found himself on the other side.