Whenever Pete babysits for Max, Seth, and Van—when Liv, Reed, Charlie, and I are going out—there is an array of fancy drink glasses littering Max’s bedroom the following morning: beer mugs, brandy snifters, champagne glasses sticky with soda. It’s disturbing. What a great example I’ve been.
[Sunday, April 6]
I went to a meeting and ran into my neighbor, Henry, who lives down the street with his wife and kids. It was awkward but at the same time nice. Henry seemed genuinely happy to see me. He told me my old next-door neighbor had attended this meeting for years before he moved. Bummer he wasn’t still around.
We took turns reading out of a book that describes the addict’s effect on his or her family. I didn’t have the gnarly stories the others did. I got sober before my life went to shit. But that’s caused me trouble believing I have a problem. I don’t believe my life would have gone down the toilet like other people’s lives did.
When I got home, I told Charlie I was blowing off hosting the Bacchanal Dinner Club. If someone else wanted to do it, fine, but I wasn’t hosting a let’s-get-shit-faced party. Charlie got this sappy look on his face like I was spoiling his fun. I suppose I am. Charlie doesn’t socialize unless I arrange it.
Most people trying to recover don’t hang out with their drinking or using buddies. The ones who do usually start getting messed up again. I’ve been telling people at meetings who question my socializing that I’m doing it for Charlie. “Why should his life have to change, why should he stop having fun just because I stopped drinking?” However, I’m hanging out with the old crowd as much for me as Charlie because I don’t want to get rid of my friends. I don’t want to feel like a sicko who has to isolate and only hang out with sober people. A lot of people in recovery shield themselves from drinking situations, hide out at meetings, talk incessantly about how messed up they were. I don’t want to be like them. I just want to be normal.
[Tuesday, April 8]
I met my sponsor, Sara, at Starbucks. I told her I thought I was on the Fourth Step: “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves,” and she told me not to do it yet. “Start from scratch and reread Step One every day for a week,” she said.
Give me a break. I’ll read it, but not every day for a week.
Going back to Step One is probably a good idea since I glossed over the first three Steps. I accepted the first two Steps—admitted we were powerless over (enter substance or behavior), and came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity—but in the back of my head, if I’m completely honest, I’m planning to drink in the future. As for the Third Step, “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him,” I checked this one off because everyone working the Steps has to work it for the rest of their lives. It’s not like you align your will with God’s and it sticks forever. Anyway, I’m glad to be blowing off my Fourth Step, my searching and fearless moral inventory, for now.
I don’t know why I want to drink in the future. I don’t want to get back on that hamster wheel of drunkenness, hangover, drunkenness, hangover. And I don’t like controlled drinking. I can control my drinking for a while, but it sucks. I want to drink until I’m messed up. Why drink if you’re not going to go for the buzz?
“I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster lately,” I told Sara. “I can be fine one minute and crying the next. I’m singing in the car, then I’m sobbing.”
“Our brains made a lot of alcohol-soaked connections,” Sara said. “Your brain is making sober ones now. You’ll probably feel edgy and moody for the next six months. You’ve been numbing your feelings with alcohol for years, and now you’re experiencing them.”
What a trip.
[Thursday, April 10]
I went to a meeting tonight with plans to go out afterward with three women I’ve met in recovery: Darcy, Eve, and Kat. Kat bailed and went home halfway through the meeting because, like Max, her daughter is having problems with her going to meetings all the time and called Kat twice on her cell phone.
Darcy and Eve and I decided to go out for pie. Eve is a cute fifty-something redhead who owns a housecleaning service. She married a rich guy, lived in a big house on a golf course, and used to play tennis and get sloshed every day. “I signed a prenup and got screwed in my divorce,” she complained as she rifled through her battered old Coach bag and extracted a pack of cigarettes at the restaurant. “I got enough money to start my company, though,” she said, lighting up. “God, the parties I used to go to, the parties in limos.”
I’d considered asking Eve to be my sponsor some time ago but was warned not to. I’d gone out for coffee with two guys after a meeting who had alcoholic wives, and they wanted to know why I got sober in hopes I’d share something they could use on their spouses. I told them I was considering asking Eve to be my sponsor, and they looked at each other with raised eyebrows and frowns. “Uh, I think she’s having some problems and I wouldn’t recommend it,” one of them said. The other nodded vigorously.
Darcy is forty-three, divorced, childless, and recently lost her job due to corporate downsizing. She was quick with a joke and a laugh, however.
It felt good to socialize with a couple of smart sober women, but I hope in time we’ll have conversations that don’t constantly revolve around drugs and alcohol. When I talk to people in recovery, the subject always comes back to what they’re recovering from, and it gets tedious.
[Friday, April 11]
I went to a bunco party tonight. Bunco’s a mindless dice game that seems to be all the rage among the suburban-mom set. I was invited to join two bunco clubs since getting sober but passed because they’re mainly an excuse to drink wine. Liv, however, was hosting her bunco club and asked me to play.
“I’m setting up an extra table for my friends,” she said. “Come. It’ll be fun. You could get on our sub list if you like it. I asked Kelly and Wendy, and they’re coming.”
I arrived early. Liv had asked Wendy, Kelly, and me to come before everyone else, and we stood in the kitchen eating appetizers, watching the regulars file in.
“That’s Nutty Nancy,” Wendy whispered out the side of her mouth. “She’s the most offensive woman in town. Talk to her for more than a minute and she’ll piss you off. She can’t help herself. She tried to get into my bunco group but was blackballed.”
Liv’s bunco club was formed by Nutty Nancy after she failed to get into everybody else’s.
Someone ding-ding-dinged a teacher’s desk bell, and Nutty Nancy and Androgynous Jaime ordered everyone to sit down. Wendy and I sat at a card table with two other women, and we took turns shaking a cup full of dice trying to roll ones, then twos, then threes, and so on, making tally marks for every die that came up right. When the bell rang again, we tallied our marks. Based on our scores, we rotated to new seats and new tables.
It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. If I were still drinking, I’d join the next bunco club that wanted me. But I’m in no position to host a house full of drunk bunco broads.
[Saturday, April 12]
I went to a meeting tonight and the guy who spoke really struck a chord with me. He talked about the Fourth Step, “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves,” which entails listing the people we resent, our bad behavior toward them, and our fears that lurk under our resentments. Usually our fears have something to do with not getting what we want or losing something we have. The speaker said he resented his parents for not recognizing and nurturing his brilliant potential. He said he resented his repressive parochial school and church. He said doing the Fourth Step had allowed him to take ownership of his behavior and forgive the people he resented; however, he hadn’t found a soft spot for his school or church.
Sybil, the infamous split personality, was raised by a Seventh-Day Adventist mother. David Koresh, the Waco Whacko, built his cult off whacked-out Adventist beliefs. I, too, was raised an Adventist, a faith that focuses on a judgmental doom
sday.
My mother, teachers, and preachers drilled into my head that the end of time, “The Time of Trouble,” was right around the corner, and I, as an Adventist, was going to be persecuted, jailed, tortured, and perhaps killed for going to church on Saturday. Sunday laws would require businesses to close and people to attend church on Sunday. Anyone worshipping on Saturday was going to experience a new holocaust. And staying true to the Sabbath was God’s lynchpin in figuring out who was going to heaven and who was going to hell. The preachers in my church would sweep their arms and shout, “Who among you will be saved? The road is narrow. Most of you will fall by the wayside. Who among you will stand firm and be saved?” Congregants’ heads would swivel, like mine, eyes scanning the pews, making mental lists of who was going to hell.
A pastor would come to my school once a week and tell us, “You’re different from the children of the world. You must be a shining example and show them what it’s like to be a child of God.”
I didn’t want to be a shining example. When anyone asked what religion I was, I got embarrassed and said, “Christian.” This question occasionally came up because I couldn’t play softball, go swimming, or roller skate with the neighborhood kids from Friday night sundown to Saturday night sundown, the Sabbath, and the neighbors wanted to know why. Basically, I sat in the house during that twenty-four-hour period and waited for the Sabbath to end.
During the other six days of the week I couldn’t dance, go to movie theaters, or read novels because Adventists didn’t do those things either. I also didn’t eat meat, which a lot of Adventists don’t do, and the Adventists who do eat meat don’t eat pork or shellfish because the Old Testament says they’re unclean.
“Say it’s The Time of Trouble,” my dad, who ate and did whatever the hell he wanted, would say to my mother as we ate breakfast. “Say they arrest me and are going to kill me unless you eat a piece of bacon.” He’d hold up his bacon. “Would you eat the bacon?”
Stone-faced and rigid, my mother would say, “No.”
“You wouldn’t eat a piece of bacon to save my life?”
“No.”
“What about the girls? Would you eat a piece of bacon to save them?”
Paula and I would look at each other anxiously, hoping our mother would eat bacon to save us.
“That’s a stupid question,” my mother would say.
“Answer it. Would you eat the bacon to save them?”
“No,” my mother would say.
“You would let us all die?” my father would yell. “Unbelievable. You’re sick. Sick.” He’d wave his hands disgustedly and stomp out of the room swearing.
Periodically, my father would pose this question in various forms. Would you eat a lobster? Would you tell a lie? The answer was always no. I wanted my mother to lie. I wanted her to eat clams. But she said she never would.
Weirdly enough, my parents met in church. My dad was raised an Adventist and, like me, turned his back on his religion. When my parents met, my father was paying his mother back for bailing him out of jail. He’d been hunting deer without a license and tried to outrun the cops with a dead deer tied to the roof of his car.
[Sunday, April 13]
A guy named George made a good point at tonight’s meeting. He said, “Resentments are like swallowing poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
[Tuesday, April 15]
I joined a second, more serious book club that Kelly’s friends, Lexi and Candy, started. Candy picked me up and we drove to some woman’s house. The book club women seemed nice, with the exception of Sherry, who resembled an Italian Greyhound. Sherry looked like she wanted to nip me. Her porcelain skin showed blue veins; her body visibly trembled; she eyed me up and down. Without a “hello” or “it’s nice to meet you,” she launched our discussion of A Heart of Stone, a book about a mother’s homicidal insanity. We spent a lot of time dissecting the milquetoast father who allowed his wife to whack their family, and Sherry segued from the wimpy father to a guy she works with. “He injured his knee and kept whining about it,” she hissed, straining like an angry dog on a leash. I told him, ‘You don’t know what pain is until you’ve been through childbirth. What you’re dealing with is nothing.’” She railed about what a lousy salesman the guy was, then said, “I have little tolerance for stupid people.”
After Sherry got through with her tirade, other members began suggesting a new book to read for the next book club. Sherry nixed everything that was suggested, then recommended Naked by David Sedaris, which is one of my favorite books.
“David Sedaris is a funny, witty, neurotic Jew,” Sherry said.
“He’s not Jewish, he’s Greek,” I said, sounding intentionally snotty.
Sherry’s blue neck veins rose closer to the surface, nicely complementing the icy blue stare she was giving me. “I’m quite sure he’s Jewish,” she sniffed.
“He’s not,” I said and smiled.
I’m going to have fun with Sherry.
[Wednesday, April 16]
I worked at a homeless shelter from eleven at night to three in the morning babysitting thirty-one homeless men. I’d volunteered at church, planning to take Max to the shelter to serve dinner, but the dinner slots were already taken by other like-minded parents and their children and I got talked into the homeless-sitting shift. An old guy named Bill who looked like Santa Claus was sitting next to me behind a blockade of three school lunchroom tables that separated us from the guys sleeping on the floor and those roaming the room muttering to themselves.
During the four hours we spent together, Bill told me he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and prostate cancer. “I’m cancer free now, but I have diabetes and need to watch my diet.”
We were a force to be reckoned with.
At two in the morning, a scrawny white guy hobbled up to the lunch tables and asked for a cup of milk for his upset stomach. Another mangy white dude circled the room, occasionally refreshing his cup of coffee. A brick house of a black man clasping a three-ringed binder asked, “Can I have one of those sandwich bags full of toiletries?” I gave him one. He shuffled to a table across from me and began writing feverishly in his binder. Sporadically, he looked up and glared at me. I fondled my cell phone, prepared to dial 911. A befuddled old man staggered toward me and asked for directions to the bathroom. “Down that hall,” I said and pointed. He stared at me with his mouth agape. I got up and walked him to the bathroom and returned to my chair behind the lunch tables. Minutes later, the old man staggered out, a dark wet saddle-shaped stain between his legs.
“Looks like the poor old guy wet his drawers,” Bill said, shaking his head.
“Yep.”
I’d ditched Kelly’s thirty-ninth birthday party for this. Candy was hosting a chardonnay-tasting party for Kelly, but the homeless shelter had been on my calendar for two months before Candy invited me. I snickered to myself. Oddly, I preferred being here.
[Saturday, April 19]
We went to Reed and Liv’s for happy hour to meet Reed’s family, who are in town from Des Moines. I had a tennis lesson, so Charlie and the boys went ahead of me. When I drove up, Kelly and Joel’s SUV was parked in front of their house. I yanked my tennis skirt down and walked in. Kelly eyed me up and down. The strain between us is palpable. Reed poured me a LaCroix and I sipped fizzy water while everyone else had cocktails. Reed’s mother, Celeste, eyed my water. “You don’t drink?” she asked.
“I quit four months ago,” I answered. “I decided to take a break.”
“I quit for a year,” Celeste said.
“Really?”
“My friends said I couldn’t do it, but I did. Lost a lot of weight, too.”
“But you decided to drink again,” I said, nodding toward her martini. I was instantly filled with hope that I might successfully enjoy a martini a year from now.
“I started drinking white wine spritzers,” Celeste said. “I just wanted a little something. I started drinking them a month ago. But I decided to ha
ve a martini tonight.”
A lot of people at meetings talk about how they controlled their drinking after a relapse, but then their alcoholic pattern kicked in and cranked up.
Reed’s grandmother sat next to Celeste and sipped her martini. “Liv tap danced for us last night,” she said. “She’s very good. Have you seen her?”
“Yes,” I said and smiled.
I walked into the kitchen and refilled my glass with sparkling water. Reed was at the counter refreshing drinks and Liv walked in and stood next to him.
“Will you put some music on for me?” she asked. “Your grandma wants me to tap dance.”
Reed stared at her. “No.”
[Sunday, April 20]
We had Easter brunch at our house, and the first thing my father said when he walked in was, “You got any beer?”
“No,” I said. “But we have vodka in the pantry.”
“You drinking again?” he asked hopefully.
“We had Reed and Liv over for dinner and Charlie picked it up for them.”
“You buy booze for other people but not for me?”
“We buy booze when we’re having people over for dinner. It didn’t occur to me to buy you beer for brunch.”
“What about having us for dinner? We watched Van when you were in Savannah.”
Apparently he didn’t remember the night Charlie and I got back. I’d invited my parents over for dinner after my dad stopped screaming at me. My father had said, “I’m not driving out here for dinner. You can cook for me at my house or take me out to eat.”
“You’re here for brunch,” I told him and took my blintz soufflé out of the oven.
My dad got a glass out of the cupboard, filled it with ice, and grabbed the half-empty liter of Absolut from the pantry. When he left, the bottle was empty.
I called my cousin, Mike, when the kids were in bed for the night and wished him a happy Easter. Mike moved to California right after we moved to the suburbs. His wife, Susan, had moved to Los Angeles a year before him intending to divorce him. She’d supported Mike in Chicago while he drank and blew off writing his dissertation. When he moved to California, they’d reconciled and Mike landed a good job as a financial analyst. But for some time, Mike’s been teetering near the deep end. He’s always settling a score with someone, and right now he’s out to destroy his next-door neighbors because he believes they catnapped his beloved Patches.
Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife Page 9
