“Before Patches disappeared, my neighbor’s fiancé, Nancy, tells me I shouldn’t let my cat out because coyotes will get her,” Mike said. “So Susan lets Patches out one Saturday morning and Patches disappears. So I’m upset, very upset, and I’m asking all over the neighborhood if anyone’s seen Patches. I see Nancy and she tells me she’s sure coyotes didn’t get her. Later, at a party, my neighbor Dale pulls me aside and asks me, ‘If someone wanted to return your cat, how would they go about doing it?’”
“Weird,” I said.
“Yeah. So you know they took her. So I tell Dale, ‘They could just bring her to my door, no questions asked,’ but no one brings her home. So I confronted Dale. He denied it. Brenda, I know they took her. I even went to a pet psychic and the psychic substantiated my suspicions.”
“No way! Really?”
“She channeled for Patches. Patches told me she was catnapped by two guys whose descriptions fit Dale and his friend. Patches said she was taken somewhere in a car and let out and that she’d tried to get home but was run over by a car. Brenda, she’s dead.”
“Wow,” I said, feeling really bad for Mike on many levels.
“I called the cops and reported Patches’s catnapping,” Mike said. “I told the police Dale appeared to be involved in drug trafficking and offered them my house for stakeouts.”
“Do you really think they’re selling drugs?”
“No,” Mike laughed. “Dale and Nancy think they’re getting married on Valentine’s Day, but that wedding’s never going to happen. I know the church and I’m booby-trapping it with stink bombs.”
“I’m really glad I quit drinking,” I told Mike, changing the subject. “It’s great waking up without a hangover. Reality’s way more interesting than being comatose. You should try it sometime.”
“Well, good for you,” Mike said.
“You really need to let this thing with your neighbor go for your sake, not his,” I said. “You’re allowing him to consume your thoughts, make you miserable, act crazy. Let it go. Move on.”
“That’s what my shrink says,” he said. “But I can’t. They have to pay.”
[Tuesday, April 22]
I took Emily out to lunch for her birthday. She and her husband, like a lot of my friends, are having midlife problems.
“You know what Scott did instead of spending Easter with us?” she asked. “Went to Vegas with his friend. I’m tired of going to social functions by myself. He barely talks to me. I don’t want to spend the last half of my life like this.”
I told Emily about my friend Bea, who left her husband right before Christmas. Somewhere around Thanksgiving, Bea started boxing up her stuff, her children’s things, and sent the boxes to her sister in Texas. Remy, her negligent clueless husband, never even noticed. Remy went to a medical conference in Wisconsin and while he was gone, Bea hired movers and she and the kids flew to Texas and moved in with her sister.
“Wow, that’s harsh,” Emily said.
“Remy deserved it,” I said. “Bea was going to leave him eight years ago when she found out he was having a weekly date with a hooker. She was pregnant at the time. But they were involved in a car crash that left Remy partially paralyzed, and Bea felt like she couldn’t leave him.
“Remy got deeply religious after that,” I continued. “According to him, everything he does is God’s will. He left his medical practice to work part time so he could minister. When the bills piled up he told Bea, ‘God will take care of us.’ Then he got into computer porn. Bea confronted him and each time he’d tell her, ‘It’s in the past. I made it right with God,’ even if it was only ten minutes ago.”
“Oh my God!”
“He’s a piece of work. Bea started complaining about Remy’s bad career moves, and he told her she was going against God and siding with Satan. He told their daughter her mother was a tool of the devil. ‘See how your mother’s trying to divide the family? She’s going against God and me.’”
“Oh my God!”
“And Remy hasn’t been to Texas once to see his kids. Bea served him with divorce papers, but he doesn’t believe they’re going to get divorced because it isn’t God’s will.”
“I don’t think my marriage is so bad after all,” Emily said.
“Happy birthday,” I said and clinked her water glass with mine.
[Thursday, April 24]
I went downtown to have dinner and see the Joffrey Ballet with Hope. I felt normal until the waiter asked if we wanted a bottle of wine and Hope and I declined. He raised his eyebrows, sniffed, and walked away. I don’t know why I should care if a waiter thinks I’m a goober who doesn’t know how to enjoy a good meal by ordering the right wine with it. The bastard just wanted to fatten the bill to get a better tip. I looked at the other tables and almost everyone else was drinking wine. Not drinking wine with dinner still feels very foreign to me.
[Friday, April 25]
My friend Libby invited me out with her lesbian pals to see their friend Claudia Allen’s new play at Victory Gardens Theater. Libby lives in Nashville, but she lived in Chicago for a time and we became friends while writing for magazines owned by the same publishing company. Libby quit drinking shortly after we met and when anyone asked her why she quit, she’d give one of two clipped answers: “It was just time” or “I just decided to quit.” Her answers annoyed me. She gave nothing away. I wanted an I-knew-it-was-time-to-quit answer I could apply to myself to confirm I was fine. That was thirteen years ago.
I drove to the B&B that Libby and her partner, Nanette, were staying at, and Nanette popped open a beer and offered me one.
“No thanks,” I said. “I quit.”
“Why?” Nanette asked, looking bummed.
“I was uncomfortable with the amount I was drinking,” I said. “And I was sick of the hangovers.”
“That’ll do it,” Libby said.
Nanette wrapped her bottle of beer in a piece of newspaper and chugged it as we walked to a restaurant down the street. Before we walked in, she scanned the sidewalk for a garbage can, sucked down the rest of her beer, and tossed the bottle in. The hostess at the restaurant showed us to a large table full of women. Libby and Nanette sat opposite each other and I sat next to Libby. After a while I nudged Libby and said, “You quit drinking on your own, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I went to some meetings, but I didn’t like them. I know a lot of people who go, though. An old girlfriend of mine called me up to make amends once. It was two years after she dumped me. She told me she was sorry for treating me badly. She said she was young and selfish at the time and that was it. I never heard from her again. I don’t know what that was supposed to do for me. She just came out of nowhere and disappeared into nowhere. It was too little, too late.”
[Monday, April 28]
I took Kelly out to lunch for her birthday. She started griping about Joel. She’s angry he’s not freshening up his career skills. She’s pushing him to start a side business setting up personal computers and sound systems and she’s angry that he’s not doing it.
“He’s unhappy and unpleasant to live with, and I’m not going to live like this much longer,” she told me. Kelly sipped her iced tea and moved on to the night I went out with Libby and the Bacchanal Dinner Club group went to Bin 36 without Charlie and me.
“It was so weird without you two,” Kelly said, “but we had the best time ever. The guy from The Bachelor, the Firestone guy, was there along with almost every unattached woman from Lake County. The place was packed. You couldn’t move. We were smooshed into the bar and they gave us free appetizers. We didn’t end up eating until almost ten thirty. We had the best time. I just love Liv and Wendy!”
“Great,” I said.
“Whose turn is it to host the next dinner party?” Kelly asked, knowing it was mine.
“It’s my turn,” I said.
Kelly cocked an eyebrow. “Do you think you can handle us?”
I wanted to smack the bitch.
&nbs
p; [Tuesday, April 29]
I was supposed to hook up with Eve and go to a meeting, but she blew me off. I went alone and when I got there Tracy announced, “Deidre’s in jail.” Everyone gasped. We all knew Deidre could go to jail, but I never believed it would happen.
Deidre was the woman in my First Step meeting who had shaken her finger at me and had said, “In the back of your mind you’re planning your next drink.” She’d known what was in the back of my head because the same thing was in the back of hers.
Deidre started attending meetings because she was court ordered to. She’d smashed her car into an automobile with two teenage boys in it. The boys weren’t wearing seat belts and they’d rocketed through the windshield, lacerating their faces and wrenching their spinal cords. The boys’ parents had attended each of Deidre’s court dates and she was convicted. During sentencing, the judge gave her two options: She could go to work during the day and get locked up at night for three months, or she could stay in jail around the clock for twenty-four days. Deidre chose the latter.
“Deidre’s been incarcerated for three weeks now,” Tracy said. “She was so depressed the first week that she was put on suicide watch. She’s been writing me letters on ruled notebook paper she decorates with flowery drawings to make the paper look like stationery. She says she’s made some friends in jail—no one she’d hang out with on the outside—but having friends has helped. If all goes well, she’ll be released in a few days.”
On the outside, Deidre looks like a regular suburban mom. She’s involved in her kids’ schools and activities. She always looks good and has a nicely decorated house. Looking at her is like looking in a mirror. I could be sitting in jail. It scares the shit out of me. Deidre is a tall woman you wouldn’t want to pick a fight with, and she’s on suicide watch. I’m a five-foot-four, 115-pound blondie. I’d get eaten alive, literally.
[Friday, May 2]
Eve relapsed. Her on-again-off-again relationship with her boyfriend is off, business is bad, and her sister is dying of breast cancer. Maybe I’d drink, too, if I were her.
Eve and I met for breakfast this morning. She said she blew me off Tuesday night because she was getting hammered. My brain began wondering, “What kind of booze did she drink? What did it feel like to buy alcohol after sitting in all those meetings? Did the first sip feel wonderful?” I felt ashamed and confessed my alcoholic thoughts to Eve, hoping she’d give me a vicarious thrill, and she did. Eve said she bought a bottle of vodka and it numbed her up just like she wanted it to.
Sometimes I really miss the numbness vodka gives me. I miss the icy burn on my tongue and the back of my throat. I miss the “Ah” feeling that spreads through my body on the first sip. I miss my wine. The next time I go to Europe, I’m drinking wine. I’ll just quit drinking again when I get back home.
[Monday, May 12]
I rented the movie Monster’s Ball and began watching it after the kids went to bed. The scene where Halle Berry blows up at her fat son for sneaking chocolate, calls him a porker, pushes him, and makes him cough up his candy bar stash hurt to watch. It reminded me of my bad behavior toward Max when he began wetting the bed and peeing on himself during the day when he started first grade. Max had been potty trained since he was three, but for reasons no one ever figured out, he started having accidents—and his accidents went on for more than two years.
I’d taken Max to a pediatric urologist at Children’s Memorial Hospital who set us up with an alarm device to pin in Max’s underwear. But the alarm would go off at the slightest hint of wetness, like whenever Max sweat, so we didn’t use it much. I eliminated certain foods from Max’s diet that I learned were diuretics, like cantaloupe, watermelon, and soda. I prevented Max from drinking anything after seven at night. Max eventually got to dry, but it took a while getting there.
I knew Max couldn’t help it when he wet the bed. If I found him and his bed wet in the morning, I’d peel off his pajamas, strip his bed, and do a load of laundry. But after four or five mornings in a row like this, I’d sometimes snap. I’d call Max “Baby” and “Pee Pants.” I’d make him strip his own bed and carry the sheets downstairs to the laundry room. If he wet his pants during the day, God help him.
Once, when we were in Blockbuster renting movies, Max began fidgeting and wiggling like he had to urinate and I asked him, “Why don’t you go to the bathroom?”
“I don’t have to go,” he answered. He didn’t want to stop playing a video game on display.
“I think you should go,” I said.
“I don’t have to go!” he insisted.
As we were standing in the checkout line, Max really began fidgeting and said, “I have to go to the bathroom, bad.” I got the restroom key from the cashier, turned around, and on the front of Max’s pants was a huge wet stain. I drove home in a rage. I made Max strip off his clothes in the bathroom. I made him wash his pants by hand in the tub. There was a dinner party for his soccer team in a couple of hours.
“I wonder what your teammates would think if they knew you peed your pants? Should we go? Should we tell them? No, I think you better stay home in case you wet your pants again.”
I kept referring to the pee incident all night, rubbing his nose in it. I knew better, I wanted to shut up, but I kept spewing hurtful words. I was afraid Max’s classmates and teammates would eventually notice his wet spots and ridicule him mercilessly. So I beat them to the punch thinking my ridicule would stop his wetting problem. I was out of ideas, powerless, frustrated. And I was sick of cleaning up urine.
I continued watching Monster’s Ball and the phone rang. It was my friend Jason, who owns an art gallery downtown. Jason told me he’d kicked an obnoxiously drunk business associate out of his gallery when the guy began pushing his girlfriend around. A day or so later, Jason sent the guy an email telling him he suspected he had a substance abuse problem. Jason offered to help him, confessing that he himself was an addict who’d sobered up. The guy, outraged and humiliated from being kicked out of Jason’s gallery, posted his version of events on the Internet along with Jason’s I’m-an-addict confession. Jason was worried sick about it.
“There are a lot of addicts in the art world,” I told Jason in an attempt to comfort him. “Who knows, it may help someone else. That guy made himself look like a whack job posting it.”
“That guy was scary,” Jason said. “He reminded me of me when I relapsed. I was never abusive like that, but it was really bad. I almost died.”
“I’ve heard a lot of people say they’ll die if they use again,” I said. “But I don’t believe drinking will kill me. I think I’ve got some drinking left in me if I want to do it.”
“I go to this really huge meeting where, like, 150 people show up,” Jason said. “There’s always a story about someone relapsing and dying. Personally, I’ve known people who’ve been sober, like, twenty years and started drinking again and were dead in a year. Those people go really quickly. It’s a progressive disease, even if you’re not drinking.”
I have heard alcoholism advances, whether you’re drinking or not. As a result, I’ve contemplated drinking again to keep an eye on my alcoholism and avoid jumping off the deep end should I start drinking years from now.
Right after I told Jason I thought I had some drinks left in me, Deidre popped into my head. I started thinking about all the times I could have killed myself or someone else while driving in a blackout, like the time I was headed for the Ravenswood neighborhood on the north side of Chicago and found myself driving downtown on Lower Wacker Drive, a road that snakes around under the city.
Ordinarily, I didn’t drive drunk with my kids in the car. If they were in the car while I was loaded, it was for a short distance to and from a friend’s home. Our playgroup, which used to plan field trips to the fire station, bakery, and random parks, had evolved into a moms’ happy hour thanks to me. As the kids got older and their interests diversified, I decided to throw a playgroup cocktail hour, and it caught on.
&nbs
p; “I dressed up my drinking,” I told Jason. “I drank good vodka and good wine out of nice glasses, but I was just a drunk.”
“You don’t know how much that helps me to hear you say that,” Jason said. “My mom and dad are alcoholics, but because they drink the right kinds of booze at the right times of day, they don’t think they have a problem.”
“My playgroup friends seemed perfect,” I said. “They were perfect moms living in perfect houses raising perfect kids. I tried to look like them, too. I thought those five o’clock martinis were a sophisticated release.”
“I can’t even talk to my parents,” Jason said. “I can’t have an honest conversation with them even when they are sober. I haven’t talked to them in months. Look what you’re doing for your kids. It’s awesome.”
[Tuesday, May 13]
I’ve been judging Kelly. I think of her as a petty, manipulative, self-centered control freak, and an insecure whacko who needs to believe everyone likes her best. She collects people and tries to be everyone’s best friend. She spreads herself around like manure.
The last time I talked to Kelly, she said, “I don’t think Fiona likes me. I’ve been trying to invite her and Carl over for dinner and something’s wrong with every night I suggest. I went to Rosy’s yesterday and just happened to look at her calendar. She and Fiona have dinner plans for the same night I tried to make dinner plans with Fiona. I asked Rosy when they made those plans, so I know I asked first. I guess Fiona likes Rosy but not me.”
Fiona would never slight anyone, so I know there’s more to this story.
“Rosy’s friend, Sandra, doesn’t like me either,” Kelly continued. “When I was there yesterday, Sandra was over and she seemed irritated, like I was crashing their little party.”
Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife Page 10
